Four Hours
by Covalent Bond
Summary: Spoilers for Secret in the Siege! Booth uses his faith to help him do what he has to do. Brennan uses her genius to find a way through the next few hours. Together, they just might uncover the motive behind Pelant's games. COMPLETE!
1. Four Hours

**Author's Note: **First, _major spoilers_ for** Secret in the Siege!**

Avoid going any further if you don't want to know anything.

~Q~

Second, given a quite recent update to one of my other stories, the first thing that popped into my mind was the way Booth instantly lied to Brennan about who was calling. I was annoyed, I confess. That annoyance lasted just as long as it took me to sit down and write the second paragraph, because suddenly I caught a connection. Maybe Booth did, too. So don't worry, I've fully forgiven him because I think he's actually suffering worse than Brennan.

The rest of this just tumbled out, pretty much exactly as you see it below.

Third, this is rated T for language. Stressed, terrified Booth will think like the ex-military, current cop that he is. The f-bomb makes more than one appearance in his thoughts.

Finally, catching connections is what Brennan does best. She sees connections between events. Most importantly, all the people Brennan cares most about are connected in a way that none of them realize. None but Brennan ... and Pelant.

~Q~

* * *

**Four Hours**

_16:11_

"You won't marry her, Agent Booth."

He heard the voice, one that had somehow crawled its way up the familiarity chain to instant recognition status. He was sitting next to Brennan and Christine. He was sitting in the sand of a playground, surrounded by dozens of ordinary people, but at the sound of that voice the thoughts that splintered through his mind came like pulsing flashbacks.

Cell phone.

Killer.

The British squintern bleeding to death from a bullet meant for him.

Bones.

Baby.

On pure instinct, Booth slapped out a lie that the call was from his mother so he could jump up and put space between himself and his family. _No bullets, God, please, no bullets._ He turned a tight circle, searching for threats. His throat tightened, his grip tightened on the slippery plastic of that damned link to death, to Pelant. _No, no no no…. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners._ He gulped. _Glory be to the Fathe_r—no time for that, Pelant was speaking, saying he got to decide.

"I always make the decisions, and Doctor Brennan can't know the reason you're turning her down. If you tell her, I'll know."

How does he know…? How does he _know_?!

He was watching, oh God, he was describing the people surrounding them. All those innocent, oblivious people. The young kid, the old man, the couple on the bench. And he'd better not tell Bones. Pelant had threatened to kill five people, but only mentioned four. Who was the unspoken fifth? He swallowed his own tongue, choking on terror. Bones? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe Christine or Parker.

"I've read everything Doctor Sweets has written about you and Doctor Brennan."

He couldn't take the risk, God, he just could not risk it. So he acquiesced. Gave in, made that sickly vow to destroy his own happiness—no, not just his; it will destroy her also. Oh God. Oh God, what Sweets wrote.

Pelant read that fucking book.

He'd accessed Sweets's files. He'd read the notes from all their sessions.

_"You and I both know that Dr. Brennan's hyper-rationality protects a soft and vulnerable core. So, if you breach those defenses and it turns out you don't really love her…."_

And Pelant was watching. And he knew, he fucking KNEW.

Pelant was watching right now. Maybe all the time.

"I'm going to find you and I'm going to kill you," Booth vowed quietly. _I won't rest until he's dead._ One more stain on his soul was nothing after this, after what Pelant was forcing him to do to her.

"I feel all of us are closer than ever now," Pelant sighed.

Booth drew on the same cover of unconcern that had gotten him through abuse and torture. That stoic face, the casual veneer that proclaimed nothing was wrong. "I will kill you." He closed the phone, quelled the roiling fear and anger and turned back to Bones.

She was watching, too, her eyes softer than he'd ever seen them. Six years he'd waited for her; two years he'd waited for her to propose. Four hours he'd been so happy it felt like flying. Seeing that happiness in her—so beautiful, so long he'd waited to see it—he walked back to her side and dropped into the sand. Christine went to bed at eight pm, which meant Bones could be happy for four hours more. He would give her that much, twice as much happiness because she deserved 40 or 50 years of it.

~Q~

_20:13_

Temperance Brennan, who swore weddings were archaic rituals and marriage licenses were merely slips of paper, sat in front of him with a bridal magazine in her lap, four hours after proposing a Catholic ceremony because that's what was important to him. Booth swallowed nausea, hearing her compromises as she happily prattled throughout the evening: no white virginal gown but a full wedding Mass and—God—a wedding in itself. An actual ceremony, not a jaunt to the courthouse.

He returned to the living room after putting Christine to bed and Brennan was flipping through that magazine again.

"I don't understand why all these women are wearing white dresses. There's no way they are all virgins..." She finally looked up, saw his bleak expression. "Is something the matter?"

What he had to do felt like Abraham standing over Isaac with the knife in his hand. He was looking down into her shimmering eyes, brimming with trust and innocence, and he was going to plunge it in deep. A sacrifice to save other, innocent people. To save _her_, maybe.

Years ago, he'd snapped at Brennan that the story of Abraham had never set right with him as a parent. He wouldn't do it, he just would not. But now he understood. God was all powerful, and all knowing. When He gives the command, you obey. Though it was a sickening comparison, at the moment Pelant had used the Cantilever fortune to steal God's shoes, usurping God's omniscience, and he gave the command to sacrifice the most precious person. And when an impostor in God's shoes gives the command, you obey.

"We need to talk." Words are like a knife. The sharper the knife, the less it hurts.

"Okay," she said. Sensing his serious mood, she shut the magazine and gave him her full attention.

This was how he knew Pelant was an usurper: at the last minute, the real God stayed Abraham's hand. He sank onto the chair across from her, sharpening the blade. Raising the knife up high, so high she didn't see it. "About the wedding, about us getting married…."

She wasn't sure where he was going, why he looked so drawn. He could see the sudden flash of doubt, the way she began to backpedal as her logical brain kicked back in—_good, she'll need it_—and she tried to satisfy whatever she thought he wanted. "Oh the ceremony doesn't matter to me. And I won't be wearing white."

"I don't think we should do it." Fast and deep, sharp and straight into the heart, then pull it out fast and watch her bleed out quickly. A merciful death to her joy. He drew a breath and plunged it in deep, felt his own heart shudder from the blow to hers. "I should have thought this through before."

They were both going to die now, bleeding together.

The stunned confusion took hold. Her blood was starting to flow, her innocent eyes getting wider, the incipient pain growing in her where the knife still rested. "But this is what you want."

He pulled it out. "But you didn't." Used her words against her to flay the other side of her still beating heart.

More confusion, a dawning recognition that he'd just stabbed her. And disbelief: how could he do this? The growing fear that she'd misunderstood something. The pain she was feeling, it couldn't be a betrayal, she didn't want to believe it was a betrayal. "But I do now. I love you. I want to marry you."

Another echoing blow to his heart, and another spurt of answering blood. He didn't know how he had the strength to raise the knife a second time. Give her a reason, give her logic. Let her think this was for her own good. Let her brain save her. "Because we've been under so much pressure. I mean that's what's really going on here.

Another plunge, deeper, harder. "Like you said, it's just a piece of paper. What we have already is enough."

The lie tore through his chest like a cleaver, cleaving him in two.

She was dying, he watched her die. Slowly, the fires of joy extinguished until her eyes had turned ashy grey and lifeless. She nodded silently. "You're right. You're right. It's been a stressful time. I'm impressed that you're finally seeing things from my perspective."

The bloody knife fell to the ground between them. He offered dinner. She stood, said she wasn't hungry and would go read before bed.

He felt himself dying, his eyes burning. "Bones? Umm, we're okay, right?"

Bones froze for a moment, her body stiffened by the rapid onset of rigor mortis. "Of course."

She vanished to the hall, and he heard her lean against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. He heard her tip her head back, heard her breathe an unsteady sob that she quickly tried to cover.

"Right." He collapsed onto the chair, dead as well.

~Q~

* * *

**Author's Note:** That's so ugly, it's like Shakespeare at his worst.

Hubris is the flaw that takes down many a maniacal leader. Hitler invaded Russia (even knowing it was Napoleons' downfall). Has Pelant made the mistake that will lead to his undoing...?

Reviews of any and all kinds are gratefully accepted, with the promise that I will respond to everyone who is signed in (though it might take me a few days to get to everyone). Thank you for reading.


	2. Eight Hours

**Author's Note:** Wow, I am so astonished at the level of interest! I hope I can live up to everyone's hopes and expectations. It's a lot of pressure.

A quick caveat before this particular chapter: I write as much in character and in canon as possible (unless otherwise specified). For now, I'm 'fixing' this in a way that feels authentic to both characters and to the expected early season nine plot given how the final ended. In other words, I think there's still going to be some tension, but B&B will definitely still be together. This chapter starts to set that up.

Where I go after that may veer out of canon territory, but for now we're still inside the lines.

Amazingly, this chapter didn't take as long to write as I feared it would. I think poor Booth was feeling like a Judas or Abraham because Pelant called to mind the fragile Brennan from 2010. That Brennan of three seasons ago definitely would have shut down and maybe even run off to … Maluku! However, the Brennan of 2013 at the end of the eighth season has been through so much over the past few months that I think she's going to show far more strength than Pelant's outdated therapy notes will predict. Sweets made all those notes about the Brennan from seasons 3-5, after all. The person she is now, is nowhere in those old papers…. ;)

~Q~

* * *

_20:18_

She hated psychology when it was a weapon brandished against her, but Temperance Brennan well understood the myriad 'psychological tricks' one could employ in the Darwinian world of survival. If her own rather Darwinian adolescence hadn't already endowed her with multiple tools tried and tested in the field of battle (high school, foster care, college, partnering with Booth), Sweets's psychology books that he'd left laying around had definitely filled in the gaps.

Now she not only knew how to use a given tool, she also knew its name and its function, its legitimate uses and its dangers.

Compartmentalizing, for example, is often misunderstood as not feeling an emotion. That is not the case; rather, it is not allowing one's emotions regarding one situation to spill over into another area of one's life. This moment was a perfect example: Booth had just changed his mind about getting married. In terms of her personal romantic aspirations, she was devastated by this sudden loss of joy and those grief-tinged feelings of sadness and confusion were dominating her. Yet, in terms of their work partnership she must handle her current grief quickly and effectively so that it would not spill over into her work with him. Having their work be affected at this point, with Pelant still on the loose and targeting Booth, could prove devastating in an entirely different way.

Thus, getting and keeping herself under control was the absolute first priority. She was quite rational on most occasions and therefore she was confident she would survive this most unexpected loss with the same tricks she'd used to survive every other loss in her life. Immediate containment through the use of Denial was required to get her to the end of the conversation. So she agreed that his decision was a prudent one. Anything to end this so she could move on to the tricks that would enable her to compartmentalize.

To that end, when Booth proposed dinner, she declined and explained she would prefer to spend some time reading. This was not a Rationalization (another psychological trick where one justifies their irrational behavior with a seemingly logical or acceptable, yet ultimately _false_, explanation). She knew she was not going to read; he might know as well, but that all depended on how convincing she was when she'd quietly agreed with the wisdom of his decision, which in itself was yet another coping mechanism she'd learned along the way. When under siege, act as if you aren't.

By far, the most important trick she'd ever learned was concealment. Whatever she was feeling, she carefully concealed it under an expressionless mask. She would think about it in moments of privacy: think, write, sketch, hum or thrash an inanimate object. When alone, Brennan could express her emotions and process them but when in the presence of someone who would, could, or already _had_ hurt her ... she concealed. With this in mind, Brennan forced her not-quite-steady voice to affirm that "Of course" she and Booth were okay.

Of course.

She just needed time and space and a box full of band-aides for her sliced up heart.

Brennan halted at the base of the staircase for a moment, concerned that her unsteady legs would make navigating the stairs hazardous. Tilting her head back to softly thump against the wall, the tide of impending emotional collapse rushed forward and pushed a single sobbing gasp ahead of the surge. It was harder to conceal this time than usual.

Quickly, before the cresting wave hit, she flew upstairs and into their bedroom. The door clicked softly, shutting him out, shutting the storm in. She sank down onto their bed as the first tears escaped and leaked in uncontrolled rivulets until she stemmed them by shoving her face into her pillow to drown the noise she was involuntarily making.

She didn't want him to hear. It was better for their working relationship if he didn't know how deeply he'd hurt her in their personal one. Just as she'd done when he'd failed to tell her of his death all those years ago, Brennan prepared herself to let it out in only secret, for as long as it took to heal, and the remainder of the time she would conceal it in the presence of others.

This was the secret to Compartmentalizing.

For this quiet time alone, she released all her doubts, fears, insecurities, all the wicked painful feelings that exposing herself to confirmed rejection had let in. She allowed herself to wallow and sulk, to pour on a dollop of self-pity and even irrational comparison. Why wouldn't he propose to her when he had to Rebecca and Hannah? Why did he take back the yes? Why did he hesitate that afternoon when she'd asked him? Why did he ask if she was serious?

Her sobs began to quiet even as questions twisted her mind, the ever constant _Why?_ And the impossible conclusion: _I don't understand._ Which was followed by Acceptance (another trick). She would never understand any of this. Not love, not him, not this. How could she have read him so wrong yet again? Because she had, hadn't she? Wasn't marriage what he'd wanted?

All those jokes about the bouquet. All the teases after their recent case that took them into a jewelry store. She sucked in a shuddering breath, eyes squeezed closed and recalled the way his eyes had slowly warmed and twinkled at the Gazebo. He'd looked so happy, she didn't think she'd ever seen him looking like that except for the night she'd told him she was pregnant.

Tonight, the way he'd avoided her eyes, the etched sorrow in his face, the slump of his shoulders. The way he'd _avoided her eyes_….

Brennan sat up abruptly, still trembling and snuffling but her mind was spinning in a new direction now and rapidly picking up speed. Booth wouldn't look at her when he said it was just a paper. His eyes had skipped all over the place and she knew that meant something. _He'd_ taught her how to look for it in suspects.

Russ had taught her by example when he'd lied as a kid.

Booth had lied.

He'd _lied_.

Why would he lie? She didn't understand but now she was starting to see that the pieces didn't fit if he'd lied. _Slow down,_ she told herself. Follow the evidence, just look for the evidence. That was it, that was what she had to do. She needed to understand.

She felt one of those shuddering breaths that signals the end of crying rumble through her while her thoughts skittered and careened back over the facts of the day. Reviewing everything very carefully, from start to finish, revealed evidence that gave her hope. He was happy at the park; something had changed since then.

Into the bathroom to splash water on her face, and her mind raced as she recalled other times he had withheld information from her, including earlier today. Usually he did it to protect her, even though it always made her furious with him. She needed evidence and … help. Help processing emotions because this was too important to make an erroneous move. Eventually she must decide how to proceed but first she needed some solid facts or evidence.

Biting her lip, she glanced to the phone by her bed knowing it was possibly tapped. This was something she and Booth had discussed earlier in the day, the possibility that Pelant might be watching them again. What to say in a phone call…?

She lifted the receiver of Booth's Bakelite phone and dialed the number from memory. "Angela? Hi, sorry to bother you." And her voice still sounded scraped and husky, still thick from the recent emotional outburst.

"Sweetie, what's up? Shouldn't you and your special soon-to-be-husband be cozied up somewhere?"

Brennan flushed but resolutely pushed forward. "Well, that's what I was calling about."

"Is something wrong?"

"Yes. We ... Well, we had a disagreement and I wish to make amends."

Her friend prompted slowly, "A disagreement."

"A difference of opinion that has left us both feeling, um ... unsettled." Brennan hated lying. She hated it. She'd never been very good at it so she opted for understatement and a rapid change of topic. "I'd like it if you could show me that place where you and Hodgins used to go for your lunch breaks. You know, back when you were first dating? I … I'd really like to see that place. Maybe Booth would like it, too."

"You want me to show you the Egyptian—"

"Yes!" Brennan interjected quickly. "Yes, the _Egyptian_ place. That's right. You … you said Hodgins really liked it there."

Angela was starting to sound cautious, especially at the emphasis on the word 'Egyptian.' "Okay, um, when?"

"Actually, can you do it now?"

"Now?!"

"Yes. I think Booth would really enjoy seeing it tomorrow. We've both had a hard day."

"Okay, I'll head over if Jack thinks it's safe to go out tonight."

"If he doesn't, call me back and we'll meet in the morning. I really need to talk to you."

"Bye Sweetie. See you soon."

The call disconnected. Brennan set the phone in its cradle and pushed her forehead into her palms while she thought for a moment, trying to imagine the different reasons Booth might have changed his mind. Because, now that her emotions weren't rioting, a softer, stronger feeling informed by eight years of partnership compelled her to trust him. No more running away, no more fortress walls. She was not impervious, she was strong.

She'd told him that, now it was time to give him the evidence.

Going back downstairs revealed Booth sitting exhausted in the same place she'd left him over half an hour ago. The strength ran through her limbs as edgy norepinephrine. "Booth, I called Angela. I'm going to go meet her."

"Now? Bones, it's late."

"I know. I just need some perspective. I need to talk to someone and the phones may be tapped, right?"

"Right. Bones..." and she heard the worry in him, the doubt. He was very afraid just then. "You said we were okay."

Moving to the work area the kitchen, she tore off a sheet of note paper for grocery lists and started to scribble a quick message. "We are," she told him while she wrote.

_If Pelant is watching us in our home, tell me you're worried about me.  
If we're okay, kiss me and tell me everything is fine._

She came towards him, wrapping her arms around him, holding his tense body close to hers. He didn't relax at all, until he felt her pressing the paper into his hand as she withdrew. Their eyes finally met, both guarded. "You told me once that everything happens eventually. I still want to believe that."

He glanced down at the paper, then back up at her with tired but grateful eyes. "I don't want you going out right now. I'm worried about you."

She smiled at him sadly. "Don't be. Everything's fine."

~Q~

_00:04_

When she returned at midnight, Booth was still awake and waiting for her with the TV on low. "I was getting worried," he said softly, rising to meet her.

Brennan tilted her head curiously, wondering if this was still the code they'd established to inform of possible surveillance from Pelant. She knew now that Booth's mother had not called this afternoon (a fact easily verified by telephoning her directly and asking). Now at last she had enough facts to induct a hypothesis.

1) Booth had received a telephone call from Pelant at the body of the second victim  
2) Booth had originally accepted her proposal at approximately 12:00 this afternoon  
3) Booth had appeared to be pleased with the idea of marriage all afternoon  
4) Booth had received a telephone call at approximately 16:00 that afternoon  
5) Booth had stated the call was from his mother  
6) Booth in fact did _not_ receive a call from his mother  
7) Booth had therefore lied about the origin of the phone call  
8) Booth had then changed his mind about getting married at 20:00 this evening  
9) Booth had avoided direct eye contact while he informed her of his changed decision

By inductive reasoning, she now suspected his change of heart was related to the phone call he had concealed from her, and further, that the call may have come from Pelant. Her hypothesis, therefore, was that Booth actually did want to get married to her but something had forced him to decline. That something, she proposed given the timing, was a threat from Pelant.

She was not pleased that he had failed to confide in her, yet not for nothing had Booth teased her for being 'the second smartest person in human history.' Brennan almost always had particular reasons for any action she took, even meeting with a friend to nurse a broken heart.

"Angela helped me see things from a more rational point of view," she began.

He laughed outright. "Angela, rational? I don't think I've ever heard you put those two subjects in the same sentence before."

"She was able to view our situation objectively," Brennan countered. "She pointed out that I had indeed acted upon a spontaneous emotional impulse, and that your decline was likely related to your respect for marriage itself as well as for me and my ideals."

Angela hadn't said anything of the sort, of course. They'd discussed far more practical matters pertaining to tracking cellular signals, triangulation, and finding ways to avoid surveillance devices. All Angela had helped her with in terms of emotions, was confirming that Brennan's proposal had indeed been born of an emotional impulse. Stepping closer, she took his hand into hers and gave him the gift of textbook perfect Rationalization. "You want me to be sure that marriage is my rational choice, not an impulsive one, because you take it so seriously."

She could tell this was not what he'd expected. Booth's eyes widened, but behind that she saw relief, a release of worry and guilt. "To help you be confident of my intentions, I will wait until six months past Pelant's capture or confirmed death; then I'll propose again."

"It's only a piece of paper, Bones. What we have is enough." He squeezed her hand right back and pulled her into an embrace.

Though she was still very unhappy with him for withholding facts from her, Brennan sighed and dropped her head onto his shoulder. "I love you, Booth. And I'm willing to do _rational_ things to prove it to you."

And the most rational thing of all was to wait until she had evidence that either upheld or disproved her Pelant hypothesis.

~Q~

* * *

**Author's Note:** Brennan has demonstrated in the past that she could tell when her brother was lying because she knew him so well (Verdict in the Story). I use that and the experience Brennan has had with Booth over all these years to justify her realizing he was hiding something. Logic takes care of the rest.

For those who believe Booth should tell her, I agree that he _should_. But I also think that he will not, because he believes it to be too great a risk. As for Pelant's threats, the real risk is that he could order the death of _any_ five random people anywhere, not those particular people in the park. That's the reason Booth obeys.

There might be one or two more chapters left because I suspect the Show will not give us the squinty reactions to the broken engagement. You've been spoiled with a fast update so you won't suffer too long, but don't get used to it. The next chapter definitely will take longer for me to write.

_Note for Julianne:_ I'm not able to answer you directly but I want to thank you for your honest feedback. Hopefully this swing back towards rationalism will be more to your taste. :)


	3. Twelve Hours

**Author's Note:** I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update this. School has been very difficult for me this quarter, especially since I started tutoring. Spring quarter ends in a couple of weeks, and then I'll finally have some time.

We got through the night with things seeming resolved on the surface. On the surface, they'll present a united front and no one will know what's really going on. Underneath, however, there is a rift growing. Keeping secrets is hard on relationships: no matter what the secret is or why it must be kept, it introduces a divide.

~Q~

* * *

_20:18_

A small creak on the stairs told him she'd gone. Booth stayed where he was, sunk into the seat while he debated the options of Scotch or self-flagellation. The last time he'd felt this level of self-loathing, Brennan had to drag him out of the Founding Fathers with the help of the bartender and a cab driver, a fact which even then had only increased his sense of worthlessness. Drinking himself stupid really wasn't an acceptable option tonight, however. Having just shattered her, the least he could do was not get himself sloppy drunk while she was off crying. He didn't need to give her yet another reason to hate him.

Part of him wanted to just go to her, but knew if he did that, he wouldn't be able to keep his mouth closed and the consequences could be fatal. Innocent people killed because of him. Again he felt that splash of pure, venomous fury toward Pelant. All he could do was sit and let his head spin, his thoughts chasing each other like swallows in springtime. If he couldn't tell Brennan, then the only option was to take Pelant down as quickly as possible.

All this time, he'd gone by the book, followed the rules to justice. Bring in evidence, bring in your man, wait for the system to work. Pelant flouted the rules, and it wasn't until the moment his genius partner had decided rules were handicaps that progress had finally come. She ran and worked outside the rules. Pelant ran to Egypt and changed the rules by changing his name. The problem was trying to get to him from within the structure of rules Pelant had no intention of following; Hodgins (another genius) might have had it right all along. The only way to get to Pelant was to start cheating.

So, he was going to cheat. If you can't catch them with evidence that ensures a conviction, then stop trying for a conviction. Maybe Jacob Broadsky was right to say the ends justified the means. Take a shot, take the cheating bastard out of the game. If he turned vigilante just this once, took Pelant out, maybe that's what needed to be done. He got up to pace, his mind working through what he would need to do to find Pelant, how he could do it while keeping everyone safe. How he could keep himself from being implicated. What he would say if Pelant called him again.

It was so quiet upstairs that Booth was surprised when he heard the floor creak (she was going into the bathroom) and he heard tap water running. A sudden terror that Brennan was packing her bags, getting ready to run, nearly consumed him. He heard a returning creak, and after a few minutes more the sound of her voice carrying just loudly enough that he knew she was talking to someone. (Angela, or US Airways?) After another indeterminate time he heard her coming down the stairs and braced himself to see a suitcase thumping down beside her.

Braced himself to see Christine in her arms.

Bones stood alone in the doorway, announcing she was going to meet with Angela. He didn't see a suitcase either but couldn't quell the fear that this was the beginning of her leaving, that he would lose her because of what he'd done. Even as she was reassuring him verbally, his partner had yanked a scrap of paper loose and scribbled on it fast and he could only stand silent and wonder what she was writing. Why she was writing anything.

Then she stuffed it into his hand right after enclosing him in a stiff, forced embrace that neither of them felt comfortable with. He glanced down at the note in his palm.

_If Pelant is watching us in our home, tell me you're worried about me.  
If we're safe in our home, kiss me and tell me everything is fine._

He raised up again to find her eyes on his with a searching look. What she told him made him blink back sudden tears of relief. "You told me once that everything happens eventually. I still want to believe that."

Checking the paper to form the correct response, he confirmed what this insanely brilliant woman had already begun to suspect. "I don't want you going out right now. I'm worried about you."

Booth had spent the last twenty minutes terrified of how Bones would react. Part of him had hoped she would shut down into cold rationalism as she'd done subsequent to his faked death. Another part had feared she would buckle and break, ultimately running away as she had after the Gravedigger trial. But the third part had clung to the faintest hope that Bones would rally, showing the strength that had brought her through Vincent's death, Christine's early infancy, Pelant's framing, and their rocky reunion.

Her sad smile didn't reach her eyes, but he could at least feel confident that she wasn't running when she assured him, "Everything's fine."

It wasn't, but he had hope that eventually it would be.

~Q~

He was even more shocked when she returned at midnight to explain, "You want me to be sure that marriage is my rational choice, not an impulsive one, because you take it so seriously."

She'd just gone and rationalized his rejection. And as if that wasn't strange enough, the next thing she said made his throat catch. "To help you be confident of my intentions, I will wait until six months past Pelant's capture or confirmed death; then I'll propose again."

"It's only a piece of paper, Bones. What we have is enough." He squeezed the hand she'd given him, (her hand, in marriage, and he _would_ take it one day). He couldn't have her hand so he pulled her deeper into an embrace because Pelant had unwittingly given them both the gift of clarity. She'd said she wanted him to be happy; what he knew now was that the only thing he needed for happiness was _her_.

Repeating what she'd told him before, after they'd struggled to overcome the damage caused by her decision to flee arrest and confinement, Brennan sighed and dropped her head onto his shoulder. "I love you, Booth. And I'm willing to do _rational_ things to prove it to you."

~Q~

They prepared for bed in silence, each lost in thought, but once in the bed they came together the same way they always did and Booth allowed himself to believe nothing had changed after all. That delusion got him as far as his morning shower before she brought him back to reality.

~Q~

_08:02_

"I'm taking you to work," Booth told her eight hours later. He'd already dressed and was slipping on his comfortable loafers over black socks featuring roses and skulls, a birthday gift from Brennan. A moment ago he'd drawn them out of his sock drawer with a flourish, brandishing them as a talisman to show her nothing really had changed.

Brennan returned his gaze in the mirror, fingers stilled on the buttons of her sea green blouse, and the dagger of anger that flashed in her honed steel eyes was unmistakable. "I don't see any point in varying our routine," she replied in a chilled tone that startled him.

The other shoe went on and Booth put his foot down. "He's out there and he's watching us."

She turned, catching his eyes with her own before asking distinctly, "Has he made a specific threat towards either one of us?"

Suddenly the floor looked very interesting. He sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose. "No." Trying again, he pointed out, "He sent someone after Sweets."

"Didn't you just tell me yesterday that if either you or I are killed, Pelant's game is over? He's not going to hurt us."

"He's already hurting us," Booth muttered.

He sensed her sharp intake of breath, her suspicion when she asked, "How so?"

"Look, just let me take you. I need to speak to Cam anyway."

"About what," she challenged. She had finished with her blouse and took up a hair brush to quickly get her hair in order.

"Increasing security at the lab."

"We're already on heightened security."

"Well, I want to make sure."

Her hair fell in soft, silken waves around her face as the brush strokes slid through. Booth wished he could run his fingers through it, knowing how the slight curls would cling to him in ways Temperance Brennan never would on a day like this one. She was prickly and distant, a radical shift in temperature from yesterday morning, or even last night.

"Fine, then you can call her once you get to the Hoover. There's no reason for you to drive me and leave me stuck without a car."

"I'm driving you and Christine to the Jeffersonian as long as Pelant is still out there."

"That's completely unnecessary under the circumstances. He isn't targeting either one of us directly. That's what you said. And nothing has changed since yesterday, right?"

Sometimes he hated how smart she was, how quick to argue, how difficult to conquer. Most days he admired her, but once in a while, when she set herself against him, he would find himself wondering why it always had to be so challenging. He didn't have the patience or the preparation to win this debate so he settled on authority instead (which part of him knew was nothing but a bluff that she was going to ignore).

"Bones, just stop arguing."

Instead of that, she stopped brushing her hair. Gritting her teeth, she stepped directly in front of him with her head tilted back. Her jaw set. "You declined my proposal of marriage, you're hiding something, and now you now presume to dictate my travel arrangements."

"I'm not hiding anything," he protested.

Brennan wasn't buying it. She slammed her hair brush down with a furious glare that cut into him as she stormed past him.

He chased after her, relieved she'd exposed the source of their tension even while wishing she could actually be as rational as she pretended. Just this once. "Last night you said you understood and you were fine with it."

"I don't want to talk about this right now." Brennan whirled through the kitchen, pouring a cup of coffee and preparing a quick breakfast for one.

"Bones, I'll cook you—"

"I don't have time. Angela's waiting."

"Damn it, I thought we were past the days where you threw up walls and ran away from me."

A deliberate sip of coffee, a hard glare while that brilliant mind went to work. He could see her thinking, calculating, and sometimes it scared him when she did it during an argument, when her eyes went almost perfectly silver like a lake under a stormy sky. She was always at her most dangerous when she looked like this. Brennan set her cup down, her face a mask but her eyes shimmering under the tempest clouds. "Not _now_. Not here."

It was stated with such soft emphasis that he wasn't sure if she was angry, or warning him.

~Q~

* * *

**Author's Note:** Booth has vowed to kill Pelant. Brennan is suspicious. Their trust in each other is very strained. My question is, what would happen if Booth really did kill Pelant? The consequences could be devastating for him personally. What do you think, Readers? What might happen if Booth actually went 'Broadsky' and turned to the dark side...?

Thank you Dear Readers so much for your interest and especially for your patience. I am so grateful for the gift of reader reviews that I will personally thank everyone who is signed in.


	4. Twenty Four Hours

**Author's Note:** Thank you all, Dear Readers, for giving me your thoughts about Booth and what kind of impact going after Pelant would have upon him. It helped me focus my thoughts on direction and tone for this story which is actually two stories intertwined and just like two lives merging, the stories merge as well. Their two stories are really the same story.

For this chapter, what I imagine is that even a rational person has emotions they can't help feeling. Poor Brennan has to take back what she joyfully announced to her friends yesterday. That's almost as bad for her as Booth rescinding his acceptance was for him. It's a very particular brand of humiliation that Brennan faces this morning, and Booth has dropped another hint that he is hiding something.

**Author's Appreciation:** For those who have left reviews over the last couple of chapters but were not signed in, I'll thank you here: suspectreesie, AutumnOlivia, Julianne, luvthembones, Rangers042376, jsboneslover, and several 'Guests.' Your thoughtful words are greatly appreciated. :)

~Q~

* * *

_08:08_

"I'm taking you to work," Booth told her in the morning, causing Brennan's heart to jolt uncomfortably. As she turned to question him, he was drawing shoes on over his black stockings (the ones bearing roses and skulls), a whimsical gift she'd given him years ago. It might be his deliberate choice to wear those stockings on this particular morning and she wished she could appreciate it fully, but what he'd just suggested must be answered and averted.

So she waited until she caught his eyes in the mirror, letting her own frustration at this situation color her rebuttal. "I don't see any point in varying our routine."

Booth stood in his comfortable loafers now as he continued to argue his case. "He's out there and he's watching us."

Christopher Pelant was out there yesterday as well Brennan knew, and yesterday Booth had not suggested a car pool. Would this be the first clue that Pelant was involved in last night's abrupt reversal? Hopeful and yet guarded, she turned to watch him while she asked. "Has he made a specific threat towards either one of us?"

_Say yes_, she found herself wishing, quite likely the most calamitous thing she'd ever willed anyone to say.

Instead of meeting her eye to eye, Booth's gaze dropped (a sign of shame? distress?) and he sighed. He also rubbed the bridge of his nose, which Brennan thought might indicate deception because Booth was not in the habit of touching his face when answering direct questions. "No." Trying again, he pointed out, "He sent someone after Sweets."

Redirection. He was most certainly being evasive, and there was a certain amount of irony in the fact that Booth himself was the one who'd taught her how to detect evasion. "Didn't you just tell me yesterday that if either you or I are killed, Pelant's game is over? He's not going to hurt us."

"He's already hurting us," Booth mumbled.

She heard it, even low and indistinct as it was. Unconsciously drawing in a sharp, offended breath, Brennan regarded him more closely still. Now she was certain he was hiding something, another piece of evidence in support of her working hypothesis (should be comforting) but it didn't help because she wished he would simply _tell_ her. "How so?"

Deflection, and a change in topic? "Look, just let me take you. I need to speak to Cam anyway."

"About what," she challenged. Brennan took up a hair brush to keep her hands busy, otherwise she might be tempted to twist his ear like she remembered her father twisting Russ's ear to extract the truth. Pain worked remarkably well as a truth serum.

"Increasing security at the lab."

"We're already on heightened security." _Try again, Booth. Or better yet, just tell me._

"Well, I want to make sure."

He wasn't going to tell her, maybe he couldn't. (Maybe he believed he couldn't.) Shunting her disappointment and burgeoning insecurities aside, Brennan applied herself to the real price of successfully evading Pelant's espionage, which was now knowingly cutting back communication with Booth when they needed it most. She could not let Booth into the lab this morning if her cover story was going to succeed.

"Fine, then you can call her once you get to the Hoover. There's no reason for you to drive me and leave me stuck without a car."

Her beloved partner, of course, would not let anything go without an argument. This had long been a feature of their partnership, the give-and-take, the bickering as they negotiated two such extremely different personalities and world views towards their common cause. How they accomplished it without rancor was a feat that fascinated many, Lance Sweets and Christopher Pelant in particular, it seemed. Sweets had written an entire book about them. Pelant, she suspected, was watching gleefully even now.

"I'm driving you and Christine to the Jeffersonian as long as Pelant is still out there."

So Booth insisted even as she resisted out of necessity.

"That's completely unnecessary under the circumstances. He isn't targeting either one of us directly. That's what you said. And nothing has changed since yesterday, right?"

Brennan watched the frustration flare in him briefly before it faded back into resigned dictatorship. "Bones, just stop arguing."

Resigned, because he probably knew already that it would not work.

Her own frustration emerged and flared as she snapped and therefore settled their argument firmly on the side of preserving their normal routines. "You declined my proposal of marriage, you're hiding something, and now you now presume to dictate my travel arrangements."

"I'm not hiding anything," he protested, clearly stung by the accusation.

Like hell he wasn't. Brennan slammed out of their bedroom, fleeing the scene of his crime before her emotions clouded her judgement even further. There was too much at stake, too much she needed to accomplish before lunch today. And too much she needed to understand before she could settle on a course of action. Too many questions, too much at stake and she hated not knowing.

He chased after her, his own accusation coming out cracked and nervous, as if he'd realized his initial fears were fully justified. "Last night you said you understood and you were fine with it."

_I'm not fine with it_, she thought bitterly, but she didn't have a choice. It was either accept their current arrangement or leave, and leaving was out of the question. So... Breakfast and then get going, Brennan resolved, zipping through her preparations for a cold, quick meal on the run. She splashed coffee into a mug and nearly scalded herself on a careless swig. "I don't want to talk about this right now."

"Bones, I'll cook you—"

She had to get out of there, it was getting too hard to stay calm. The burning in her mouth from careless coffee consumption alerted her to how little she was in control of her actions at the moment. "I don't have time. Angela's waiting."

"Damn it, I thought we were past the days where you threw up walls and ran away from me."

And that did it, did a number on her sense of balance and her ability to remain compartmentalized. Brennan felt the verbal blow as a distinct lack of trust in her, which hurt, but she couldn't let it hurt. She couldn't let it divert her. So she drew a breath, and took a second and far more cautious sip of coffee while the riot of anger and fear submitted to a jolt of caffeine and her calm deliberation, and when she finally replied it was merely to forestall the inevitable. "Not _now_. Not here."

But later, when it was the right time, she would ask him why he brought up that particular accusation to throw at her.

~Q~

_09:13_

Working at the Jeffersonian Institution held many perks and privileges, and the one she'd enjoyed most over the years was the proximity of so many museums, gardens, fountains and monuments within walking distance. When she needed to get away for a few minutes, the Jeffersonian Castle garden was right across the National Mall and reachable within five minutes of walking. The National Museum of Natural History was right there as well, containing her own lab as an adjunct facility. A few steps and she could stand in the Rotunda under the enormous woolly mammoth, looking up into mammalian history, or a turn for the cetacean, a stroll through the Cambrian, or even a jaunt to the Jurassic.

This morning, the temptation to shirk, stall, or meander away was nearly too strong to resist. The only reason she did not succumb was a well-founded fear of Pelant watching her, and thus the image she needed to project for his watching eyes was that nothing was overtly wrong. Straight in to work she must go after dropping Christine off at the daycare if that façade was to be maintained, so rather than delay and reveal her discomfort in that act, Brennan pushed boldly through the entrance to the lab instead. She paused just inside the doorway, taking a moment to breathe and consider the most efficient way to get herself through the most unpleasant task she'd ever faced here.

The most sensible route was to simply do it, right? Like Angela and Hodgins had, hand in hand at the altar. _"There's been a change in plans."_

Except, Booth wasn't here with her (her fault, she conceded, because she couldn't let him be here). The story she had to tell hinged upon a no-big-deal attitude. Go in and shrug off the change of plans as if she'd changed her mind about procuring window drapes or altered her travel itinerary. No one questioned changes in one's home décor or vacation destination, and if she was casual enough, Brennan hoped no one would question the sudden reversal of her matrimonial intentions less than a day later.

Angela spotted her and gestured her over until Brennan joined her inside the quiet cocoon of her artist's haven. Their talk last night had mostly been about practical matters, but Angela knew almost everything. Almost, except for the fact that none of this was Brennan's choice. That was the one detail she'd left out.

"How are you doing?"

"Fine," Brennan answered crisply. "However, I'm finding myself extremely unsettled by the prospect of announcing this change in my personal aspirations."

"Sweetie, it's not a change, just a postponement. And you've got a good reason for it."

"I know." But it was hard to hold onto that assurance when Booth had avoided her eyes and lied about nothing being wrong only an hour ago. The evidence was mounting and still he would not entrust her with his burden. She sighed. "Let's just get it over with."

"You want me to…?"

She had already reached the door. "No. It's better if I handle it alone. If you're there for moral support, it won't look like my choice. And it is. My choice."

The words tasted bitter and gritty in her mouth. Her choice, she reminded herself, right up until yesterday afternoon. This was what she wanted yesterday morning and the trick to get herself through _this_ morning was to pretend like everything that happened after yesterday morning was a minor aberration, an irrational impulse on her part which she would now rectify. Forget the last 24 hours had ever happened.

Angela smiled. "You've come a long way, Bren."

"I have a very steep learning curve," she confirmed with a dispirited shrug.

And a glaring lack of self-effacement, Angela noted with an amused smirk. Fortunately, Brennan's honest and generous nature was more than enough to absolve her in those moments where her confidence got the better of her humility.

Brennan corrected her own posture and comportment as she left Angela's office. Nothing is wrong as far as anyone else is concerned, she reminded herself. Striding briskly onto the platform where Hodgins and Cam were quietly engaged in an argument over equipment, Brennan halted beside them and proclaimed, "I have an announcement."

Everyone within earshot paused, intrigued, because Brennan's pronouncements tended towards tabloid-worthy decisions such as asking her platonic FBI partner for a sperm donation or relaying that she'd just accepted an invitation to head an archeological expedition to dig up Indonesian Hobbits. Of course, Brennan always prefaced her wilder schemes with scientific camouflage: the Hobbits were Homo floresiensis and the sperm was objectively of the highest genetic quality. (You've seen that muscular definition and the superior bone structure, all signs of a perfect male specimen. Who would _not_ want Seeley Booth's sperm for their reproductive projects?)

So, having dropped a marriage bombshell involving that self-same, long suffering FBI Agent only yesterday, all the lab held its metaphorical breath (the HVAC units themselves even chose that moment to pause and give her silence) as everyone waited for Temperance Brennan to elaborate on her next shocker. (Two in as many days: this might be a Jeffersonian record.)

"Yesterday I made a precipitous emotional decision which has caused my partner to feel I may have compromised my own ideals regarding matrimony. We have assessed our relationship and have come to the conclusion that the Christian marriage ritual is of sufficient religious importance to my mate that it should not be undertaken without the proper level of reverent regard."

Silence.

Staring eyes.

Slightly opened mouths.

Awkwardly, Brennan looked down at her hands (ringless, and suddenly she wished for a circling band that would indicate eternity, certainty where there was none) and finished what she needed to say. Quickly, before her emotions betrayed how much she hated this. Quickly, before anyone else realized how much it felt like she was trampling her own heart under the words.

"There isn't going to be a wedding."

"Never?"

This came from Cam, her eyes soft and worried, sharp and penetrating.

Brennan did not like to lie, and faced with Cam's prescient concern, it suddenly occurred to her that she might be required to engage in subterfuge—to deflect—because the excuse she'd invented only gave her time, not any kind of promise. She didn't know yet if Booth's change of heart was permanent. There was only hope, the faintly rational hope that he would want her when Pelant was gone.

Trying to project a confidence she couldn't truly feel, Brennan explained, "We have decided not to marry under a shadow of doubt." Everyone there would guess at what she might be referring to, but only she knew what it truly meant.

"Now I'd appreciate it if we could all get back to work."

~Q~

Past the days where she threw up walls? Booth had said it, but it was Sweets who had accused her of that. Years ago. It was another puzzle piece, Brennan told herself, but this one might not be related to anything. She should be focusing on Pelant.

Pelant had nearly ruined her life once already, by framing her for murder, and she'd had to turn fugitive because of that. Was that what Booth had been thinking? Pelant and his obsession with her, with the Jeffersonian. Why her? Why would he frame her, was it to get her out of the way? He'd also targeted Caroline Julian, Hodgins, and Sweets, all in ways that were unique. She still didn't know why he would do that, but acknowledged that her skill set had never included any facility with determining motive. If Pelant had somehow forced Booth to recant his acceptance of her proposal, Brennan didn't know the why in that either. She might never guess the why but she could certainly try her hand at the how.

When it came to questions of how, Brennan usually excelled.

To reach that end, she closed herself into her office to think, indulging in a few minutes of pacing before she finally halted the wasteful activity and turned to something more productive instead. A sheet of paper, a pen, and her thoughts jumbled down out of order. How?

Computers. Cameras. Listening devices. Me, Booth, Caroline, Hodgins, Sweets. Hiding behind walls and running away. Fugitive. Murder suspect. Christopher Pelant. Hacker/Activist. Started by taking down web sites, but graduated to murder. Anti-FBI. Confidential Informants who were criminals themselves. (Like my Dad?) Surveillance. Invasions of privacy. He knows things, things he shouldn't know. He called me Temperance, said motherhood made me less intelligent. He's read up on our backgrounds, combing through public records and personnel files. He's hacked into computers.

Sweets said Pelant got into his old unpublished works. Works on his computer.

The pen stuttered to a halt, leaving a skipping line that trailed off the half-finished 'r' tacked onto the word, 'computer.' Computers he'd hacked. Sweets. Computers. Things he shouldn't know.

Things nobody knew.

Oh God. Oh no.

Framed.

A bribed official.

Pregnancy. She was pregnant when it started.

It all came crashing over her like an avalanche, all the puzzling pieces falling into place as they pelted all around her. She still wasn't sure about how but this was one of the rarefied moments when she was absolutely positive she knew the _why_. Absolutely sure she knew exactly why it was happening.

Brennan shot up and out of her office like an Olympian sprinter. "Angela!" A shout, drawing attention but she didn't care any more who was listening.

"I need—" and here she abruptly stopped, slowed, considered. What did she need? How to proceed? Her pulse raced as she considered where it was, where he would have had to look first. How could he have gotten it? How would he even know where to look? And when did it happen?

Angela was there, one elegant brow lifting a question and Brennan told her what she needed in a breathless rush. "A long time ago I deleted a file that it turns out I need. Is there a way to retrieve it?"

Angela smiled, "Of course, Sweetie. Bring the computer to me and I'll get it back for you."

"It's been over four years," Brennan explained doubtfully. No, she amended. She explained it _hopefully_, because what she hoped to hear was Angela sadly assuring her a file four years gone was lost to the ether and may as well have never existed. That it could not be resurrected.

Instead Angela laughed, sending a chill like icy breath over her skin. "You'd be surprised how long files last on computers. Short of scrubbing the drive, nothing is ever truly gone."

That was exactly what she was afraid of.

~Q~

* * *

**Author's Note:** How does a genius operate? I can't claim to be a genius (pretty sure my IQ is miles lower than Brennan's) but it comes to me in a flash. If what I wrote looks 'too easy,' that's because it _is_ that easy. I don't see it ... until suddenly I do. It comes to me that fast, stray ideas and random bits of information that suddenly collide in my mind and then I _see_ it. Maybe Brennan's brain works in the same way.

So, are you wondering yet? What file does she need retrieved?

Just like the characters we all love, once I set upon a course I will be forced to suffer the consequences. That includes Reader Rage if I don't take the path you're hoping for. ;) But I think I've had the flash of insight that may make this story unique, if nothing else. The clues are already there. Stay tuned... (Insert evil grin)

Meanwhile, I am so grateful for the gift of reader reviews, comments, guesses and even for criticism that I will personally thank everyone who is signed in. Or personally apologize for the evil tease, if that's what's required. Just let me know which one it's going to be. :P


	5. Second Day

**Author's Note:** I hope you will forgive me for my manic excitement in the last update. You see, it's hard not to be excited what such an amazing "Ah-HA!" moment comes along. This idea came to me a year ago, actually, but I put it aside when I was unable to see how it was possible. Then a certain line in Secret in the Siege plus the reviewing of two key episodes for an entirely different story I'm writing brought it all back. Ah-_ha_!

Now, my dear readers, I have a plausible means, a motive, and an opportunity. Brennan had the means, Sweets knows the motive, and Booth provided the opportunity. What does this mean? It's a puzzle, and puzzles are solved by putting pieces together.

**Content Warning:** The first section of this chapter contains some violent imagery that some may think is an M rating. Skip down to _Morning_ if you are under age or simply want to avoid violence. The rest of the chapter and story is still T.

~Q~

* * *

_Commute_

Driving alone, Booth glanced into the rear-view mirror and saw something familiar there, a side of himself that was rarely seen since he'd partnered with Temperance Brennan.

Once upon a time (before Brennan), Seeley Booth had looked into a mirror and acknowledged that he was an expert at killing. In that oval frame, he'd stared into eyes that were empty like muddy fields left fallow in the devastating wake of war. Cold and lifeless, all traces of humanity gone.

The eyes of a killer.

From some of the top secret missions he'd gotten close and personal with the men he'd had to kill. He knew the progression after a bullet pierced a chest, the exact series of events as a body lost its battle to live. He knew how a face would turn pale and then almost grey from blood loss and dropping blood pressure, how sweat would break out across the cold, clammy brow and the eyes would be wide and panicked. There was a wet, squelching sound at first as they gasped for air, but that would always be followed by a strangled gurgling as the lungs filled and then deadly silence when they had filled utterly with blood and couldn't draw in another breath. Deadly silence. No sound, only the increasingly pallid color and distancing in the eyes as the pupils relaxed into wide, black pools and then ... dullness. Lifeless.

He was a killer.

He knew the exact color of arterial spray in sunlight, and how that same red looked like black oil under the light of a full, silvery moon. Blood in sand, blood on pavement, blood in water. He'd seen it. Often he was the one who put it there. Skulls shatter. Brains explode and are mostly greyish white, but the pinkish color comes from blood. Through a long-range rifle scope, an exploding chest signals a confirmed hit. And an exploded human doesn't look like a person, it looks like raw, ragged meat wearing clothes.

He could view it dispassionately because he told himself it was only meat. (This was why Brennan's habit of calling it 'remains' had grated so heavily on Booth's composure all those years ago. As he struggled to reconnect with slaughtered humanity, to feel compassion and pity once again, her way of shutting herself off was too haunting and familiar. And too tempting.)

He knew all of this because he was a killer.

Coming out of the Army had left him tormented with a lack of purpose since there's no calling for killers in polite society. He'd spent some time drifting through Vegas looking for the adrenaline rush that only high risk could give him. Bottoming out too fast was too much a risk there, even for him, so he'd taken a tip from one of his buddies and applied himself to college via the GI Bill. The field he chose, psychology, was supposed to help him understand why his father drank and why his mother left, why his grandfather raised him to be an honorable man but the thing Seeley Booth excelled in most was shooting people from 2000 meters away. Psychology couldn't tell him that, but it did help him control symptoms of PTSD and get him a job.

That's how he ended up in the FBI, not exactly a killer now but still chasing thrills and finding a way to slowly correct all the wrong things he knew. If he caught enough killers, could he ever atone for the lives he'd stolen from a mile away? It seemed like the only chance at redemption that matched his skills and he soon learned there was one other thing he excelled at: it takes one killer to catch another.

That's how he met Brennan, the woman who scoffed at his cosmic balance sheet but then offered to help him with it.

First he'd fallen for her decidedly offbeat sense of humor, coupled with a razor sharp intellect and the pop culture awareness of his Great Aunt Zelda. The next thing to enchant him was her exotic blend of cynical innocence, the way she could describe in nauseating detail the exact method used to brutally slaughter someone, and yet never fully understood how or why any human being could do that to another. Sometimes he questioned if she really understood the brutality of the things _he'd_ done, given her empathetic nature that miraculously survived every horror she'd been subjected to.

Or perhaps it was that very nature that had gotten through all his defenses. Somehow she'd gotten deep enough to get past the killer and find the man he'd once been. From that very first case, being with her restored to him some sense of his own humanity and gave him hope that he could reclaim that part of himself. Though at first he'd resisted her and attempted to hide his darkness from her, Brennan was a truth seeker. She found him out, discovered secret after secret until she knew him like no other, and she stayed with him anyway. She loved him and made him human again even after he'd had to kill again. Especially after the job forced him to kill again, Brennan always pulled him back from the edge.

The thought of losing that, losing _her_, burned into him with a terror that rivaled losing himself.

Pelant was a killer, cold and dark like him. Setting his sights on Brennan had been Pelant's first mistake, but underestimating the ruthlessness of the lethal soldier he'd challenged was his second.

Because under the civilized veneer Booth was a killer.

~Q~

_Morning_

"Hey, Agent Booth. How's it going?" Ron Sanders greeted him at the Employee's security checkpoint, the same greeting he'd given every day for the last two years.

"Fine." Booth submitted to the quick check with barely restrained impatience.

"Anything new?" Small talk, chit chat.

"Nope." There was, for a little while, but not anymore.

Sanders smiled and waved him through. "Okay, have a great one."

Yeah, right. It was going just peachy so far.

If there was anything good about his current situation, it was the fact Booth hadn't announced the engagement to anyone other than Sweets. At least there was no official retraction with attending questions looming over him. That was one small thing to be grateful for, and here was another: getting to work a little later than usual helped him drift past people too busy to look up and nose in on his foul mood. He didn't feel like acting civilized while his thoughts had veered towards the planning required to achieve his objective. Pelant, dead.

For the next hour, Booth kept up the appearance of paperwork, eyes down on files, scrawling a signature here and there. His mind strayed to tactics for surveillance, equipment to gather, weapons procurement, contacts he could use. Everything he was planning had to stay inside his head as he checked each item off into categories and a timeline. This was going to take time and very careful planning but it was nothing he hadn't done before.

There was a minor problem in not having a spotter, which meant he'd have to get closer than he liked to take the shot. As far as getting away from his responsibilities long enough to stalk and corner his prey, that was the one problem Booth still didn't have a solution for. Brennan would broil him like a suspect if he didn't have an airtight excuse for being away from home. Especially now...

Pelant might have known this, Booth realized suddenly. With Brennan's trust shaken, that meant any excuse for leaving would be challenged. It meant he couldn't stalk and snipe, the skills Pelant most feared and had apparently taken steps to curtail. Damn it! That bastard thought of everything. Outsmarting a soldier was easy, outfoxing an evil genius was damn near impossible. A burgeoning headache finally chased him out after a cup of coffee.

Caffeine to sharpen the synapses because his plans were going to have to take Brennan's distrust into account.

Booth picked up the coffee carafe but got no further in this plan than the other. Instead, he realized he'd managed to evade Sweets longer than expected and he only appreciated that reprieve now that it had come to an end. The younger man unwittingly cornered him in the break room when he entered with a bright greeting that contrasted Booth's bleak mood almost painfully.

"Booth! Hey, I was wanting to ask you..."

And Sweets stalled out within seconds as he took in the grim clench of Booth's jaw, the desolation in his eyes. "Whoa, what's wrong?"

"What makes you think something's wrong?" He slammed the carafe back into place, brown liquid sloshing violently inside.

"Seriously?" The kid tilted his head and started shrinking right there in the damn break room.

Growling, Booth grabbed his still empty cup and stomped away. "Leave me alone, Sweets."

That wasn't going to happen, of course. Like an obnoxious kid brother, his pinch hitter partner trotted along slightly behind and said nothing but kept his too-observant eyes trained on Booth's face with the analytical stare Booth had long ago begun to hate. At the door to his office, Booth turned and snarled, "Knock it off!"

"I'm not doing anything." Too calm, too concerned, too damn perceptive. Sweets finally looked down and seemed to gather his thoughts, but by then Booth had gone into his office and plunked back down into his chair. The Steelers mug slammed back on the desk top and his head throbbed worse than ever.

Cautiously, Sweets came in and shut the door with exaggerated care. "Did something happen with Doctor Brennan?"

Gruffly. "Now why would you ask that? We're fine."

Another long pause. "Yesterday, I'd never seen anyone happier."

To his horror, tears suddenly spurted into the edges of his eyes because he _was_, damn it. So elated and giddy and jubilant yesterday that even being reminded of it was too much to endure. He knew Sweets was going to see the redness and there was nothing he could do but glare down at his desk and pray to St. Jude (of lost causes) and St. Christopher (for strength) that none of the tears would drop. Or that Sweets would not ask anything that required an answer because his voice was going to be a dead giveaway.

The stand-off lasted another excruciating two minutes before Booth thought he had himself safely enough under control. He braved a glance at Sweets at last, seeing nothing but concern and traces of suspicion. Gently, he asked, "Did she change her mind?"

God, yes, she'd changed her mind. Finally, two years in, she'd changed her brilliant, stubborn mind and offered marriage. Booth shook his head, gut churning over guilt and lingering enmity. "I did."

"_You_ did?! Why?"

The lie tasted like battery acid. "It was kind of an impulse, you know? And Bones, she doesn't do impulsive. I just think we need to be sure, sure it's what she really wants."

Another long and speculative stare that made the kid look like a puppy begging for scraps. Can't have that, Booth decided, and he knew the fastest way to distract the younger man also happened to be a way to help himself. He needed insight that only Sweets could provide.

"What else do you think he could have gotten into?" Booth snapped abruptly.

"Who...?"

Good, Sweets was off balance now. Booth stood and shoved his chair back aggressively so he could lay claim to more space and pace anxious circles around his former therapist. "Pelant. Could he have read your private therapy notes?"

_Their_ therapy notes, he meant, and within seconds he saw the transformation into outright horror when Sweets caught on to the implication. "Oh..."

So it was possible. Freezing, Booth stopped all movement and just stood like a monolith next to his file cabinet as sickness piled onto grief but he could not let that stop him. No time for this. No, he needed both of them to keep their heads in the game. Wrenching himself back into action, he stepped into Sweets's field of view and let sympathy shine for a brief moment.

"Look, it's done. It's not your fault."

Hanging his head, he muttered, "I feel like it is."

"Yeah, you know what? That's not going to help, so get over it." Sweets flinched but Booth pressed forward. "I need to know what Pelant will make of your observations. What will he expect us to do?"

Okay, Booth was right. Sweets steeled himself to be useful; his own emotions would have to wait but the moment he got out of here he was going to go vomit somewhere. Turning his attention to Booth's question, the psychologist clenched his hands over the back of a chair and willed his roiling stomach into compliance for a few more minutes. "The last time I met with the two of you regularly was before you went back into the Army and Doctor Brennan went to Maluku."

"How about separately?"

His face clouded. Hesitantly, he admitted, "I've met with her a few times alone."

The temptation to ask was nearly overwhelming, but he wouldn't. Maybe he should just be glad she'd had someone to talk to ... then. He could guess when. And the thought of Pelant getting into her head, (knowing things about her that even he didn't know) just filled him with bitterness as well as fear. Pelant was _stalking_ them.

When the hunter becomes the hunted, how do you reverse the advantage? Information, what the military refers to as 'intelligence.' Wars are won and lost on the presence or absence of accurate intelligence regarding the enemy. He needed the intelligence and he needed it yesterday. Literally, the outcome might have been a hell of a lot different if he'd have known this yesterday.

"If I hurt her, what will Pelant expect?"

"What?" Sweets looked up sharply.

"Just answer me and don't ask questions."

"If you hurt her?" The wheels in Sweets's agile mind spun like NASCAR racers, 300 mph as '_changed his mind_' flew past, squealing against the pavement where the dejected agent asked about hurting his partner, and screeched to a halt at therapy notes that might predict what she would do. What they could expect based on what she'd done before. And Pelant hacking private patient notes.

There could be only one reason Booth would ask him this.

He saw the moment Sweets caught on. Clenching his fists into tight lumps of uselessness, Booth faced his former 'partners therapist' and demanded the insight. "What will he expect her to do if she's wounded emotionally?"

"He'd expect her to shut down," Sweets answered softly.

"And if she doesn't?"

"Then we'd have a short-term advantage." Because Pelant was relying upon inaccurate intelligence.

That was Pelant's third mistake, and the biggest one yet.

~Q~

* * *

**Author's Note:** It's getting dark in here... But, there is hope because Pelant's expectations are faulty.

Thank you to all who read and review. Regarding that mysterious file, more on that in the next chapter.


	6. Noon

**Author's Note:** During the previous chapter, we got a peek into Booth's heart of darkness. Unless something changes, this is the direction I think Booth would take in the Show. But I'm the writer here, and I don't like letting darkness win.

About that file ... Brennan has begun to recover it and now we see how a little bit of knowledge can go a long way towards illuminating the darkness...

~Q~

* * *

_Noon_

She sent him a text message that was vaguely daring, all things considered. "Meet me here for lunch."

And he did, because the window of opportunity was going to be small and he knew he was going to work with her, figure out some way to exploit that narrow span between what Pelant expected and the way she'd reacted so far. For the first time since their painful argument this morning, Booth dared to hope it had been intentional, that Brennan was more steps ahead of Pelant than even he was.

When he saw her standing at the entrance to her office, however, that hope grew weak and fainted at his feet. Brennan was pale and almost trembling. "Come on," she urged, grabbing his hand and pulling him along so fast that he nearly stumbled. She dragged him into the bowels of the Jeffersonian, down where they'd once stored the contents of Gormogon's vault and stray artifacts from the ancient history wing.

"Where are we going?"

"Angela says there are no cameras down here. This is where she used to meet Hodgins when they wanted..." Sensing Booth's objection to any continuation of that explanation, Brennan jumped ahead to the part that mattered. "She checked for bugs last night when I asked her to. It's still clean and we've both been working down here all morning."

Baffled by the urgency, he asked, "What's going on?"

But Brennan didn't speak another word, just wormed her way into the back, into a small alcove that contained a table, two folding chairs, and a pair of laptop computers connected to a single printer. Beside the technology sat a rather low-tech stack of papers several inches thick. When she was there, she released his hand and turned to him, and what he saw in her face halted him.

She looked absolutely haunted.

"How much do you remember of your coma dream?"

"What?" The question was so unexpected that he almost thought he'd misunderstood it.

"How much?!" And her voice cracked, splintered.

"I… I don't know, not much."

"You told Sweets about it?"

Every single drop of blood drained out of his face when the phone call from yesterday hissed inside his head. _"I've read everything Doctor Sweets has written about you and Doctor Brennan."_ He would have read about it, he would know that Booth had dreamed of being married to Brennan and owning a nightclub. That much he still remembered, as well as the confusion over who she was exactly that had lingered for weeks afterwards. Sweets kept copious notes to help him sort out his jumbled memories and perceptions. Booth fumbled for the nearest chair and sat down.

He still hadn't replied. Brennan, however, had taken his loss of motor control as affirmation. "What did you tell him? What do you remember?"

How the hell did she know to ask this?! He was still confused, concerned to see her on the edge of control, trying to understand and put everything together because clearly, she needed him to answer. "There was a nightclub, a murder. I dreamed of you, that I was married to you. Someone framed you…."

And then he stopped, startled.

Because he saw the similarity, even then, sketchy as it was.

But Brennan was on the verge of hysteria and self-recrimination. At least one of Pelant's murders, if not every single one beyond the first, might be the result of a book she'd never intended anyone to read. And because that particular story was so deeply personal that she felt violated. Invaded. Saying it out loud made it real. "He read it."

"About the coma?" How did she know that Pelant had read about them?

"No, my book."

"Your story?" Though she still hadn't really explained, Booth knew what she meant. Knew she'd written a story during his coma, knew she'd deleted it and had never told him what was in it. The only part of it he'd ever known was what he'd recalled as a dream. "He couldn't have. You deleted it, right?"

Brennan shrugged, an uncharacteristic gesture of uncertainty that she rarely indulged in. "He's a hacker. He found it somehow, he went through my personal computer and retrieved it. It's easy to do with software like EnCase: all he had to do was get in and mirror the drive. It's too easy, and he did it."

"You don't know that," Booth suggested. Hoped. It wasn't like her to jump to conclusions and there was no real proof yet, only a haunting echo of Brennan being framed twice.

"Oh, but I do." Laughing cynically, Brennan shook her head. "I'm the only one who could recognize it, there are parallels."

Scraping the very bottom of his memory yielded very little in the way of comprehension, but Booth tried it anyway. "You being framed for murder?"

"That's the most obvious. There are others, some very subtle."

"Like what?" he inquired, now very curious. Brennan had begun to calm down a little also, which was definitely a good thing.

"Our friends engaging in obstruction of justice on our behalf. And someone having to make a choice about implicating a coworker."

Though most of this didn't make sense Booth reached for her anyway, pulling her to stand close against him as flashes of that dream, that other life, came back in pieces. Most of what he remembered was the good stuff, kissing her, making love to her, and the baby. The club; the clothes. "It's just a story, Bones. These are coincidences."

She refused to be comforted. "It's not a coincidence. This was deliberate."

Likely she was ten miles further ahead than he was. Booth sensed she was seeing things he was blind to, her brilliant mind leaping through a web of interconnected facts to see possibilities he couldn't even imagine. Now she was trying to explain and he was trying just as hard to grasp why any of this mattered.

"I noticed it before and at the time I just didn't have enough information for it to be plausible. Then I found myself becoming a fugitive for murder and that kept me preoccupied for months. Something you said this morning made me think of it again and we now know he's hacked Sweets's unpublished papers. It was only this morning that I realized, if he could get into Sweets's computer, then he could have gotten into mine."

"Bones, I don't see why this is something to worry about. It's not—"

"I _wrote it_," she snapped, pushing herself back and furious but he knew it wasn't directed at him. "I wrote all of this and real people have died!"

"Okay," he soothed. Being upset and feeling responsible made sense, but Booth watched her closely, the way her ordinarily smooth movements had become stuttered. "It's just a murder mystery, right?"

"It was about our family." Brennan's arms drifted up into a defensive position as she lifted her head and met his eyes squarely and unflinchingly but her voice still trembled slightly. "I wrote about making love with you, about being in love with you and wanting your baby. I wrote about being your _wife_. Everything I felt about you is in that book."

She'd thought about getting married back then? Shocked now but slowly starting to get it, slowly starting to understand what she was telling him, he guessed at what had made her so deeply unsettled. "It wasn't Andy and Kathy."

"That story was _me_. It was you and me. It was everyone we know, the way I see them. I used all our names. _That's_ why I deleted it."

It was every bit as personal as a diary.

Booth felt his muscles tremble with fury that was rapidly escalating into sand-blasted blindness. That Pelant would do that to her, violate her most private yearnings like that, and then make him break the engagement because he hoped it would break her. _"I will take him down,"_ he vowed silently. Then he noticed Brennan was watching him very closely, wearing that intent gaze that meant she had caught his emotional tells and was dissecting his facial expression for a source. It had been a very long time since he'd tried to hide his emotions from her and he was woefully out of practice. Drawing a deep breath, Booth forced his thoughts back to more practical matters and the brief flare of wrath vanished before she could fully grasp its presence.

But she was still watching him, and that needed to stop. Booth set his mind to the task of distracting her. The opportunity to gather intelligence on Pelant (so he could end her suffering permanently) outweighed his desire to comfort her in the moment. So Booth asked himself why would Pelant hack her personal laptop? How might they prove that Pelant had hacked her computer and read a deleted book? What advantage might either side gain from this? Glancing at the two computers which he now saw were linked to each other via a USB cable, he saw that the printer on the table was linked directly to the computer that did not belong to his partner. And none of it was connected to any other network.

A book retrieved from digital scraps on a five year old laptop might look like the stack of papers standing idly beside it all. "Is that it?"

She nodded, regarding papers warily. "Angela helped me recover most of it. The file was very fragmented so there are some pages missing here and there, plus one whole chapter at the end."

"How did Pelant get it?"

"The same way Angela did, but I don't know when. Or how he knew what it was."

Booth took her hand and squeezed gently, ready to tell her at least some of what he knew. "He hacked Sweets's files."

"We knew that," she reminded him.

"He read everything Sweets ever wrote about us, Bones. Everything."

Of course she'd known that was possible, which was why she'd asked him if he'd told Sweets about the coma. Of course she knew, but suddenly the reality of it scraped against her like an emotional disrobing.

"And he's watching us in our home?"

Booth winced but answered truthfully. "I think so, yes."

Brennan felt everything go hazy and thick for a few moments as the depths of Pelant's invasion were revealed. There was nowhere in her life that he hadn't slipped in his greedy fingers. What if he watched her shower, or watched them make love? Thoroughly shaken, she fell into the other chair beside her mate and briefly considered just giving up. She had plenty of money and didn't need to work. There were ancient digs in far flung countries where she could go, Booth and Christine would come too, and they would just be happy somewhere in the tropics ... but almost immediately she shook her head to dispel the flight of farfetched fantasy.

Booth wouldn't leave the FBI or Parker.

And Pelant would still be out there, sending assassins to kill his next target or he might just come after her no matter where she went.

Running away had never been a realistic option, so Brennan resorted to what she always did when under fire: go over the evidence. Pelant had targeted everyone, had read personal things. He'd framed her, and now she felt a most peculiar certainty that her novel had been the impetus. Finding herself stuck back at the beginning, coming back to the why, the primary why, Brennan acknowledged she'd reached her limits. The why always managed to elude her in the end.

She knew what she wrote, but not what it would mean to Pelant. In that book there might be something they could use, something only she understood but that he would misinterpret. Barely able to acknowledge what was required of her, Brennan reached out for the stack of papers and placed a protective hand over them. The thought of it made her squeeze back tears but she drew a deep breath and shoved the stack towards Booth before she could take the coward's way and change her mind. "You should read this. Then take it to Sweets."

Standing, she started to leave but Booth caught her wrist and held her back.

"Bones. Are you sure?"

She shook her head, bitterly, knowing their only chance to get inside Pelant's head was to let Sweets and Booth into the deepest recesses of her own heart. "You've got a way with suspects and you know everyone. He's a criminal profiler. You'll both be able to see the connections better than I can."

"We should all do it together."

"I can't..." she choked off a strangled sob.

Quickly he gathered her into his arms and pressed a kiss against her temple. "Baby, you always put your heart and soul into your stories, and we've all read them. Total strangers read them. This isn't any different."

No, this _was_ different. It was like letting them read her mind while she slept; it was messy and personal and embarrassing. She shook her head again but let him embrace her while he kept kept speaking. "What you wrote, what I remember, and what Sweets observed about us, that is the intelligence Pelant is using against us. We have to put it all together so we can see ourselves from his point of view."

There was a certain, painful logic in what he was saying. If she could imagine the names being different, it really was just a story. Letting out a sigh as she felt tempted to relax under Booth's soothing hands (rubbing gentle circles against her back) Brennan settled against her partner and wished he could tell her the one truth she most desperately needed to hear. Instead, he continued to persuade her. "This is no different than letting us read one of your manuscripts before it's published."

She never let anyone but Angela read her unfinished work. "The difference is, it's about _us_."

"You trust us, right?"

She almost lost it then. Brennan shoved him away and turned to keep a tight grip on herself as tears threatened to erupt all over again. She did yesterday, trusted him with her heart, her happiness, her hope. Last night he withdrew and today she needed him and his comfort but she knew underneath it all he was concealing something. It was so hard to keep holding on with so little trust left.

The push, the retreat, both poured ice water down his spine and made him shiver. "Bones?" He reached for her again, trying to turn her back to him.

When she finally acknowledged him, responding to his worried tone, he saw how guarded she had become and yet so desperate. "Is there something you know that you can't tell me?"

God, she was too damn smart. Had Pelant predicted this, how quickly Temperance Brennan could think, or how damn hard it would be to keep her in the dark? How safe were they? Not safe enough, he wouldn't risk it even though he could see how badly she needed the reassurance. His reluctance must have been obvious because she came back and grabbed his chin fiercely, dragging his eyes towards her.

"_Please._ I need a reason to keep trusting you. Please, Booth. Just a yes or a no, that's all I'm asking for."

"You know that I love you and I would do anything for you, right? I would do _anything_ to keep you safe."

Her eyes searched his. "Is that what this is about?"

He pulled away before she got too close. "Everything I do is to keep you and Parker and Christine safe. Just please remember that."

"Okay." She nodded, giving up it seemed and he looked askance in surprise.

"That's it?"

"If that's all you can give me." He looked away, sighing miserably, until she spoke again. "I love you, too, Booth."

That little bit of reassurance was enough for both of them, at least for now.

~Q~

* * *

**Author's Note:** Am I crazy? (Perhaps yes.) I saw similarities a year ago, but didn't think it likely until we learned Pelant had hacked Sweets's computer. What do you think, dear readers?

PS: _EnCase_ is actual forensic data recovery software used by experts in digital forensics. I've had the pleasure/horror of using it for a forensics class and can vouch for the fact that it will indeed cough up bits of files that have been deleted for years. Among many other things.


	7. Interlude

**Author's Note:** First, an apology that this is going up a few days late. My personal life got crazy busy over the last three weeks such that I had very little time to write. Things are returning to a calmer state now.

So, getting back to this story, the question of why has bothered us all, I suspect. There are a lot of whys in the Pelant arc and while I may not know how to get rid of him (legally), I might be able to help our heroes use his own schemes against him.

~Q~

* * *

_Interlude_

"Are you going to stay while I read this," Booth invited.

And she blushed, a very rare occurrence indeed because it was nearly impossible to embarrass Temperance Brennan. Backing away, she gestured towards the exit. "No! No, I'll just ... get back to work." Then she left him alone with the remnants of her unpublished book.

The book that made her blush.

Grabbing several sheets of blank paper from the printer, Booth pulled the unbound pages closer and turned the first one over.

The novel began with a place and time:

**Washington DC**  
**4:47**

Something about that number seemed important. It wiggled and gnawed at the back of his brain, teasing a memory that was just out of reach. His subconscious might pull it out later, he decided, but for now he scribbled,

'4:47. Number, time or date could be important. Cross check case files and Pelant's profile.'

Moving down the page, he began to read.

_"People say, you only live once. But people are as wrong about that as they are about everything. In the darkest moments before dawn, a woman returns to her bed. What life is she leading? Is it the same life she was living a half hour ago? A day ago. A year ago. Who is this man? Do they lead separate lives, or a single life shared?" _

As she'd warned him, Brennan had used their names. A woman named Bren approached her husband, Booth, and right in the very first chapter began what Booth thought might be the steamiest love scene she'd ever written. Both the passion and the erotic details painted pictures in his mind that wrecked havoc on his libido. His mouth went dry, his stomach twisting with desire as he read about himself making love to her years before it actually happened.

Had she actually read this out loud to him?! No wonder that dream was so vivid!

He paused, drawing a shaking breath, already so deeply affected that he was afraid to continue. But then he realized Pelant had read it too, and the same wave of violation washed over him that surely must have swamped Bones. Right here in her own words was the proof of how deeply she'd loved him and longed for him all those years ago. If she were next to him right now he would kiss her, make love to her right there, make any promise, do anything to reassure her.

Wiping his own tears away, Booth forced himself to keep reading.

_"A storm approaches. It is still over the horizon, but there is lightening in the air. Are either of them aware of the gathering turbulence? Can they feel the crackle of electricity in the wind, or are they aware only of the power they generate between themselves? The first hint of the storm is not a thunderclap. It is a knock…."_

She'd written this during his coma, Booth recalled, right in the midst of her chaotic proposal to have a baby using his donated sperm. The storm in her own life might have been that (now undeniably) love-generated request plus his sudden hallucinations and his collapse in the operating room. But in the story, it was a murder that disrupted the happy couple's lives.

A murder disrupting their happy, domestic life together... She'd said there were parallels.

Camille Saroyan appeared as the detective, the opponent, along with Jared Booth. Cam was cynically confrontational and yet fundamentally noble as she searched for the truth. Meanwhile, Jared wanted Bren and seemed to be helping while simultaneously trying to drive a wedge between the marriage partners. This made sense, he supposed, since she'd written it only a few months after her dead-end date with Jared, the soured RICO bust and Jared's lifesaving intervention when the Gravedigger had kidnapped Booth.

Booth sat back to make further notes, especially Jared's role as trickster and Cam's role as collector of evidence and seeking the truth at any cost. Considering how Brennan had once questioned Cam's integrity, he was surprised to see the way Brennan had written the detective bearing her name. There was a strong tension between the two characters (Cam's bold suggestion that Bren was cheating on her husband), and yet Bren reconciled it as police tactics designed to dig out a valid alibi at the expense of what Cam thought could be a crumbling marriage.

Sweets was a bartender and confidant to the secondary characters. _"I'm practically a psychologist."_ Booth snorted a laugh.

Angela the hostess served as the heart of The Lab and aspired to interior decorating.

Hodgins the novelist/narrator watched everything with a knowing eye and told the story from an affectionate distance. In some ways his character paralleled Brennan herself (when he'd first met her), the anthropologist observer who cared about and yet never fully engaged with the people around her. The wry narration of Jack Hodgins echoed the softly sarcastic voice of Kathy Reichs, (Brennan's usual protagonist), and both of them, Booth realized, revealed Brennan's wistful sense that she was watching a family that wasn't quite hers. She didn't feel that she belonged, more that she was tolerated as an outsider allowed just inside the circle only because of their real affection for Booth.

A lump formed in his throat at that.

Caroline Julian was a corporate attorney who should be shifty and yet extended her protective presence over all the characters like a warm, motherly hen. _"Consider them well represented."_

As the story unfolded, he read the couple drawing closer as the clouds of doubt and suspicion thickened and yet did not tear them apart. The fictional Booth refused to even consider the possibility that she might be guilty, and Booth himself nodded agreement as he recalled similar sentiments as far back as New Orleans and their first year together as partners. No way Bones would ever murder someone, he would never believe that of her.

He read about the entire cast of characters contributing towards obfuscation in an effort to protect Bren and Booth from looming murder charges. As their manipulations of evidence was revealed, they were taken out (arrested) one by one... Booth's head shot up, recalling how he and Sweets and Caroline had been suspended one by one. Muttering a string of curses under his breath, he began scribbling more notes for follow-up.

He ran across the number 447 several more times and vowed to ask Brennan what the significance was.

Towards the end of the book, Bren declared faithfully that she knew fictional Booth would kill for her and keep it quiet so she wouldn't worry. He shuddered, struck to the quick by how well she knew him, then and now. And Pelant, if he'd read it, knew this also.

_He expects me to try to kill him,_ Booth realized with shock. If Pelant read this book, he would expect Booth to hide the truth from Brennan and go after the source. _Okay. Okay, this is good. I needed to know this._ Passing a shaking hand through his hair, Booth sat back and let himself relax for a moment. He breathed deeply, closing his eyes to review all his plans from earlier in the day and realizing how deeply he'd been played. _Shit._ Then he wrote another note: 'The trick is to surprise him, to catch Pelant off guard. We have to do what he doesn't expect.'

At last he'd reached the final complete chapters, where he read about Detective Camille Saroyan's indecision as the last bit of evidence implicated her partner for murder.

_"Ask your partner where he was when Worstenbach was shot," Max Keenen whispered with a sly gleam in his eye. "Check the records from his phone company and you'll find he was right here, defending his lady love..."_

_The stoic detective blinked back disbelief when Max's silky information wended its way through her head. Was it possible that Jared had framed his own sister-in-law?  
_

_Meeting Max's mocking gaze, Saroyan turned away in disgust and walked towards the exit, pulling out her own phone to make a quick, confirming phone call. Still waiting in the foyer five minutes later, she had her answer: __GPS coordinates placed her partner in this building after midnight on the night Worstenbach was shot. The entire time, he'd been the killer._

_ Glancing down at the floor, she weighed the reason he'd killed against the reason the murder victim was there to begin with. They were sure Worstenbach had intended to harm or even kill his sister-in-law, which meant Jared's shot had probably saved her from injury or death._

_She could say nothing. She could ignore what Max told her and let the murder fall to the wayside, unsolved. Or, she could uphold the law and let a jury make the call of whether it was justified or not. Slowly, Det. Saroyan pivoted and went outside in search of her partner. She had thirty seconds to make up her mind, and the fact that Jared had murdered the man and framed Bren rather than simply arresting Worstenbach was what finally tipped the scale._

_When she reached the parking lot, he was standing there and a knowing glance flashed between them. Slowly, reluctantly, she stepped closer. "Jared Booth, I'm placing you under arrest for the murder of Dick Worstenbach."_

_"You would turn in your own partner?"_

_Cam blinked back tears of painful disillusionment but she nodded. "Either you believe in the system or you don't, and I do."_

_He chuckled without mirth. "Always pegged you for a bigger cynic than this. Worstenbach was scum."_

_"I hate this, Jared. I really hate it."_

_"Me, too." And he pulled his gun. So she had to pull hers._

_And that's how the others found them, facing off against each other._

Grabbing the notes he'd made, Booth scribbled further observations and wrote a question for Sweets. He underlined it twice. Cam is the hero...?

Finishing the last full chapter left Booth wiping tears away again. Bren settled into Booth's lap and teased that she could no longer drink a glass of wine with him, but not because she was worried about becoming an alcoholic.

_"No way," he exclaimed as comprehension bloomed in his smile._

_Bren chuckled, playing with his tie and meeting his eyes adoringly. She'd never even considered the risk of bearing children into this cruel world until meeting Booth, but his honesty and compassion made her trust him like no other. He would never abandon her or their child.  
_

_"Yeah?" Before she could confirm it he pulled her down, sliding his lips over hers and drawing her slender (but not for much longer) body against his. Pure joy pulled him back at last. "You are pregnant?"_

_Reverently he placed his large palm over her belly, low, but she slid it down lower. (Correcting him, no doubt.) "There's a little baby boy, huh?"_

_Bren tilted her head and pursed her lips disapprovingly. "Or girl..."_

_"A baby," he murmured in blissful disbelief. "You're having my baby."_

_She nodded, suddenly tearing up. "You're happy?"_

_"Are you kidding? Come here." Their kisses grew hungrier as he tilted her backwards and reminded her how she'd ended up pregnant in the first place._

Another steamy love scene colored his ears scarlet and made him set the pages away with a shaking hand.

It was hard to believe she'd written this two years before they became this couple, that she'd wanted this life so early on. In fact, he realized, she written this only days after asking him for a sperm donation. She'd wanted his baby, wanted him, and had tried to genius her way into it when she thought he didn't want her... God, If only he'd known; if only one of them had been brave enough to say something. This was not the first time he'd found himself wishing he could go back and change their history, make his desire for her known so much earlier and then just waited for her to be ready. It wasn't the first time, but it was the most devoutly he'd ever wished for a do-over.

He couldn't go back in time, but he could let her know he wanted her now.

Gathering up his notes, Booth carefully restored the stack of papers and made his way back towards the lab. When he found her on the platform, bending over a tray of small bleached bones, he paused at the railing to simply admire her. How many years had he known her, and he still thought her the most beautiful, graceful woman he was ever likely to see. When Brennan worked with bones, she always flowed over them like water.

"Bones."

Cautiously, she glanced up and noted his enthralled expression but she didn't say anything.

Staying away might be the best plan but her book had made it just as impossible as the dream it generated had four years ago. Booth walked up the steps, setting off alarms to pull an audience while he crushed her against him. Her gloved hands shot outwards just before he tilted her head back and stole her mouth with a plundering kiss intended to outdo anything she'd ever imagined. Their reality was better than fiction.

Drawing away a few moments later, she looked half dazed and yet rapidly returning sensibility had already pursed her lips in burgeoning disapproval. "Booth. We're in the lab."

"I don't care who's watching. I love you and I just wanted to tell you that you were right."

"I was?" Her brow furrowed for a moment but then he saw her eyes start to sparkle a little and her body trembled slightly.

"About everything." Every question she'd asked, every suspicion she'd harbored, every plot she'd executed over the last twenty four hours. He shifted his weight, then added meaningfully. "I understand your point of view, that a piece of paper is not important because that isn't what makes me happy. _You_ are what makes me happy. Just being with you is a dream come true."

He saw the moment she understood, saw her sniffle slightly and raise her wrist towards her eyes to brush away a drop. He held her gaze a moment later, until she nodded, then he left the lab.

~Q~

When he got back to the Hoover, Booth slipped into Sweets's office and just stood quietly for a moment to gather his thoughts. Before he could decide how to go forward, he needed to understand more of what Pelant expected from them.

Sweets pushed back from his computer, standing but going no further because he could see Booth was weighing his options, or possibly calculating risks. Finally Booth seemed to reach a decision, which led him to lean over and speak quietly.

"If he's targeting her, we need to find out why."

Drawing in a hissing breath, Sweets glanced over at his computer with a perplexed curiosity. "You want me to go over the profile again?"

Booth nodded, then drew a slip of paper forward to scribble another instruction. _My coma dream._ Lifting his eyes to meet the younger man's, he added, "There's something connecting them, Sweets. Find it."

"Yeah, okay."

"Meet her at the Jeffersonian at five this afternoon." Booth turned to leave and at the door, he paused again to issue a warning. "He wanted you dead because you're dangerous to him somehow. Be careful."

~Q~

* * *

**Author's Note:** We hate to admit it, but there is a reason Cam was needed when she was first hired. She did not just compensate for Brennan's lack of people skills or impatience over budgeting, she also proved herself essential when she centralized and organized the flow of information. Having access to information is vital. Booth knows something about Pelant's actions that Brennan doesn't, and only she can understand the importance of it. If she ever discovers this one thing, it might unravel another mystery.

What does Booth know...? It's not what you're thinking.


	8. Afternoon

**Author's Note: **A shout out to fellow writer, Wendish, who is writing '_You and I Collide_, ' a deliciously funny, steamy, romantic version of THAT night and everything that happened (or didn't happen) during those first few nights when Booth and Brennan were finally getting together. A few weeks ago she and I had an exchange where she suggested a motive for Pelant that is both plausible and shocking. I already had this chapter sketched, but the essential root of this idea is similar enough to Wendish's idea that I think she deserves a nod for her fantastic vision. At the time I told her she would see the similarity when it comes up. Here it is... :D

~Q~

* * *

_Afternoon_

"How did it go with Booth?" Angela asked when she returned to her office and Booth had stayed below to begin reading.

Brennan glanced away uneasily, very uncertain of privacy now. "We're fine."

"Did you work things out?"

"We're still not getting married."

Angela sighed and nodded. "And that's what you call 'worked out?'"

Shrugging, Brennan turned to ascend the platform and resume her inspection of a group of bones that had been recovered from a roadside grave in rural Virginia. Her task of determining animal or human was made relatively difficult by their condition: heavily weathered, broken chunks that showed signs of having been gnawed upon by rodents and small predators.

Angela trailed behind, watching her with concern.

"We're not fighting," she defended a moment later. "It was a mutual decision."

"No one suggested otherwise, Sweetie."

"I know," Brennan hedged, suddenly uncomfortable. She studied the bone fragments with vigor, fingering the raw edges as if they held all the answers. "But you're looking at me like..." she didn't know what. Like there was a death in the family.

"I'm just worried," Angela said softly.

Not knowing what to say, Brennan nodded and deflected in the way she did best. Totally truthful cluelessness. "Because Pelant is still out there."

Angela offered her wry agreement lightly seasoned with a resigned roll of the eyes and left Brennan to her favorite means of distraction.

Time stood still when she worked with bones. Brennan tunneled her vision on the calcium flats and rills, taking tiny micrographs for visualization and documenting every taphonomic artifact as a way to isolate possible peri-mortem injuries. And then, of course, there was still the question of human or not, but her metaphorical intestinal sensations (gut, Booth called it) suggested human. The bones felt human.

Time stood still when she worked with bones and so when she heard Booth softly say the word, it surprised her. She'd temporarily forgotten he was still there, and why.

"Bones."

Lifting her eyes away from the bones to adjust her focus back outward, she noted the change in him. He looked different, seeming to radiate warmth and it made her heart throb and made her feel relieved even if she didn't know why.

He suddenly turned and a moment later he was up on the platform, his body slashing through the laser barrier to set off the squealing alarms (which of course made everyone within earshot—the entire Jeffersonian Medico-Legal Forensics Unit—stop and watch) and before she could ask him why he didn't just wait a second longer to pull out the access badge she'd gone to the trouble of getting for him all those year ago, she was hauled up against him and unable to speak at all.

His mouth, hot and demanding, poured heat into her and his lips immediately began prying hers open so that his tongue could sweep tenderly past the barrier of her teeth. He was breaking barriers, breaking rules, pushing past boundaries of publicly displayed affection that they had agreed upon when their partnership stretched to include love and family. She barely had the presence of mind to shove her gloved hands away before his intoxicating touch could make her forget everything except kissing Booth forever might be a wonderful idea.

When he released her a little and she tried to recall her scattered wits enough to remind him where they were (Pelant watching), Booth growled, "I don't care who's watching. I love you and I just wanted to tell you that you were right."

And though it took her a few seconds to sort through the pile of questions she'd harbored recently to pluck the exact match to his veiled answer and apply it correctly now, she got there rather quickly all things considered. Even with his kiss still smoldering against her lips and the echoing burn of her body, she understood him. Yes, he was hiding something. Yes, he still loved her. Yes, it was still a yes.

~Q~

_Late Afternoon  
_

As they'd agreed, Sweets came to the Jeffersonian late that afternoon and followed Brennan to the secure nook she'd carved out with Angela's help. Booth was already there, waiting. Everyone had agreed to leave their cell phones and computers in their respective offices and Angela had placed a scrambler and swept the area for bugs.

Taking a seat as he deposited a briefcase on the table, Sweets pulled out a legal notepad scribbled with ideas and looked over at the partners. "Are we assuming Doctor Brennan is Pelant's primary target?"

"You tell me," Booth challenged.

"Okay, this is what we know: Christopher Pelant is extremely intelligent and was effectively abandoned by his father at a young age. He was a social outcast as a teenager. He was overweight, had few friends. He may see a similarity between himself and Doctor Brennan, who was also abandoned and socially marginalized as a teenager."

Brennan held a steady, slightly challenging gaze on him. "That's psychology."

Beside her, Booth shifted and nudged her discreetly.

Sweets raised a brow. "That's my mojo, that's why I'm here."

"Yes, it is." She glanced away for a moment, considering the ways her life and Pelant's intersected. Was he looking to be noticed? Was this some juvenile playground game where a boy hits the girl he likes, just to get her attention? Only in this case, Pelant was killing people and destroying her life, as well as the lives of everyone around her. Brennan felt Booth's quelling touch and gestured for Sweets to continue.

"Pelant saw himself as a crusader, a champion of the truth. Again, he may have considered his objective to be similar to yours. The crime that first brought him notoriety was hacking into a Congressional website so that he could shut it down with the question: '_Where's the website?_' He replaced it with his own photo, which suggests he is looking for acclaim. He wants to be recognized, famous. Again, like you."

"Anthropologically, that fits," Brennan conceded. "People search for acclaim as a means of distinguishing themselves."

Booth smirked at his unapologetically famous anthropologist/best-selling author/partner.

Sweets pulled a little grin at her rationalization and continued. "When that endeavor didn't pay off, he went for a bigger target. He took down the Department of Defense network with the question, '_What are you defending?_' According to your interview notes, Agent Booth, Pelant claims his motive was to expose corruption in the form of improper campaign donations and bribes for defense contracts."

"Yeah, right. He's a real patriot," Booth grumbled.

"In his mind, that's exactly what he is," Sweets countered. "The hack into the DoD is what brought him under investigation by the FBI, which he believes to be unjust. He's looking for corruption, you see, exposing everything that's wrong with the government and that's where his path crosses yours, Doctor Brennan. That's where it starts."

She sat up a little straighter, listening carefully even as she felt Booth glowering nearby. "Because he thinks the FBI is corrupt?"

Sweets reached for the briefcase beside him and pulled out a file. "He gave us a hint in an interview back in January 2012 and I didn't realize the import." Sliding the folder towards her, he sat back and said gently. "I believe he thinks you got away with murder because the FBI is corrupt."

Booth shot upright with a bark. "What?!"

"Max Keenan's trial. Pelant said he'd read _all_ the court transcripts where any of us gave testimony. In your father's trial, you were proffered as a viable alternative suspect, yet charges were never brought against you. No investigation either. Pelant may have assumed it's because of your association with Agent Booth and your work with the FBI."

Disturbed, Brennan pulled the transcript over and started flipping through it. She looked up at Sweets and reminded him, "You testified that I was capable of rationalizing murder."

"Yeah." He fingered the edge of the tablet in front of him as he measured his words carefully. "Objectively, I believe you would be capable, under certain circumstances, of planning and executing a murder. However, I believe such a murder would resemble the death of Deputy Director Kirby—close, quick and painless—rather than the one Pelant arranged for Ethan Sawyer, which was prolonged and cruel, and yet also detached. Furthermore, I'm quite certain you would dispose of your victim in a way that is completely untraceable."

Here he paused to reach a faintly admiring conclusion: "You probably _would_ get away with it."

"No she wouldn't," Booth snorted.

Affronted, she lifted her chin in challenge. "Yes, I would."

"I'd catch you."

She chuckled. "We've had this conversation before and no, you wouldn't."

"You're forgetting how well I know you, Bones. The only way you would ever get away with murder was if I was involved in it with you."

Although she vehemently disagreed, Brennan dropped the argument because she was thinking again, drawing connections rapidly. She turned back to Sweets. "So, you're saying Pelant believes I carried out a murder and escaped the consequences, just as he did with his guidance counselor?"

"Correct. It's yet another way in which he views you as his equal. At the same time, he believes you are corrupt and by extension any criminal investigation in which you have participated is also potentially corrupt."

Having held himself in check at the revolting comparisons until this point, Booth lowered his chin now to stab Sweets with a furious glare. "You can't be serious! She's the most honest person you'll ever meet!"

Frustrated, Brennan placed her hand on Booth's arm and shook her head. Not the right time, not the right target.

Booth was the one thinking now. He glanced at the stack of papers Sweets had to read this evening and then asked the million dollar question. "What does any of this have to do with my coma dream or her book?"

He still recalled the basic outline from what she'd revealed years ago, and today Sweets had gone back through his notes from that summer of 2009 to refresh his memory. "Until I read it, this is only going to be my best guess."

Nodding, Brennan smiled crookedly. "Thank you for admitting it's a guess."

"It's an educated guess."

"It's still an unverifiable opinion."

"Whatever Bones," Booth interjected. "We need to hear what he thinks."

"I just wanted to make that clear," she defended.

"It's clear," Sweets clipped with annoyance. "Five years I've been helping you with profiles and still I have to go through this..."

"Sorry," she said, and sounded sincere. "I just don't like the imprecision of psychology."

And having to endure his psychologically objective lens probing into her with 400x resolution, scanning deeply into her very cells, was going to be excruciating. Brennan brought her arms up to catch hold and felt Booth's sympathetic hand smoothing her shoulder. Necessary pain, she reminded herself. Get it over with.

The silent struggle wasn't lost on him. Sweets shook his head, unable to stop himself from petulantly wondering why she didn't give Booth a hard time also, but he tried not to take it personally because he knew this was her way of distancing herself from the process. Granting her a moment of reprieve might prove more productive than pressing the matter too soon.

"Okay, let's delve into literary analysis instead. Assuming Booth's recollection accurately rendered the basic outline of your plot, your character was suspected of murder and evaded the consequences through the efforts of the people around her, people who cared about her and her husband."

Brennan nodded agreement. "She was framed unintentionally."

"Yeah, but that's not the part Pelant has chosen to fixate upon. As far as he's concerned, that novel is a form of bragging."

"Bragging." Though she wasn't trying to be difficult, Brennan's skepticism and desire to dismiss the idea entirely was unmistakable. It wasn't bragging at all, she'd written it as the antidote to having been so stressed from Booth's coma and her effort to understand who the people in her life were, what they meant to her. At that point she'd come to realize she loved Booth ... but she also loved Angela and Hodgins as family, (Cam and Sweets as dear friends), and losing any one of them would hurt just as much as losing Booth or her parents. Setting them all within a different context had helped her clarify the attachments between members of her metaphorical family as she'd realized that losing any one of them would cause her pain. And she'd never meant anyone to see it. How could that be bragging?

"Gloating."

Dismayed at this egregious misunderstanding of her motives, Brennan echoed, "Bragging, and gloating? It was private!"

"In his mind, you wrote that book as proof that you are so beloved that you actually could get away with a murder, because the people around you would believe you innocent and do anything to help you. It serves as a virtual gauntlet. Basically, he wanted you to prove it."

Surprisingly, she did not argue this. Instead she only sighed and slumped back in her seat a little. "The irony is, Bren was innocent of the murder, and I am innocent of Ethan's murder. The only thing he proved is that people who love us will help us when we're innocent."

"But the key is, in both cases, evidence suggested _guilt_ and your friends helped you despite that."

"Agreed," Brennan conceded.

"And, I suspect, that is eating him up with jealousy. Pelant doesn't have any friends."

Shivering, she crossed her arms again and stared down at the file from her father's trial. All this might be caused by her effort to save her dad, and to understand her affection towards the people in her life. Other people had died along the way and lives were upended. How could loving people cause this much chaos? Brennan brushed a small tear from her eye but stayed in control as she pondered what to do with these insights.

What did Pelant expect her to do?

Beside her, Booth palmed her back reassuringly a second time. To Sweets, he asked, "What about the Johanson murder?"

"Inger Johanson's murder was specifically planned to draw your attention, as well as to test the capabilities of the entire Jeffersonian team. Your allies. He left her remains in the Lincoln Memorial, and President Lincoln is of course associated with honesty, integrity. He left you a message in bones specifically rearranged and encoding the location of the rest of her remains right on top of evidence proving FBI corruption."

Booth nodded his understanding. "So, that was his opening gambit? Testing us?"

"Yes. Then he retreated to set up the experiment."

~Q~

Leaving Sweets alone to read her short novel, Booth pulled Brennan aside a few feet away. "Bones, I noticed the number 447 came up in your book a few times. Does it mean something?"

For one second she looked confused, but then recognition dawned and she went a bit pale again. "It's the time you coded."

"Coded?"

"Your heart stopped at 4:47 PM. They got it started at 4:49."

"I was dead?!"

Reaching out to touch his arm, her touch grounded him and her assurance was almost comically understated. "Obviously you did not actually die, since you're standing here asking me if you were dead. Death is irreversible."

"Bones..." He crossed himself rapidly, shocked to learn this little factoid years later. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You couldn't remember anything for a time. Given your total amnesia for the first day, the fact that you'd suffered a brief cardiac arrhythmia didn't seem particularly pertinent."

"But you had to watch that!" Shuddering slightly, Booth pulled her close and whispered an apology because now he knew exactly what it must have felt like.

"It wasn't your fault, Booth."

Unable to help feeling otherwise, he recalled regretfully, "I asked you to be in there."

"I wanted to be there," she countered, "because it made you feel safe."

Having her near would always make him feel better. The number was still nagging him, however. Pulling her closer again, he dropped a kiss on her head and thought out loud. "If I don't remember coding, why does the number 447 seem important...?"

"Perhaps you saw it somewhere else," she suggested.

"Yeah, but _where_?"

~Q~

* * *

**Author's Note:** Well, what do you think? You lovely readers have opinions, I'm sure. I'd love to hear them! :D


	9. Night

**Author's Gratitude: **For everyone reading, for the notes and for the reviews, I thank you. For the embarrassing delay in actually sending out thank you notes, hopefully I'll get caught up soon. For the unforgivable delay in posting this next chapter, my humble apologies. Being too spread out (story wise) made it hard to keep up two stories at once. However, I want to get this one done before the 16 Sept premiere, so I'm going to PUSH myself. Thank you for waiting patiently.

Hopefully you'll love what's coming and if nothing else, always remember: this entire story has been about finding unexpected answers in a story. The stories converge. :)

~Q~

* * *

_Night_

With the question of that number still nipping him, Booth left to go pick up Christine while Brennan remained at the lab waiting for Sweets to return to her office. Searching for a productive way to distract herself, she flipped open her computer in the hope that reworking a chapter in her current novel-in-progress might keep her mind off that _other_ book and the man currently reading it. Creativity wasn't helping, however, because her thoughts kept spinning back to Kathy and Andy, Bren and Booth, fictional couples that had always been mirrors reflecting what she saw in herself and Booth, or what she wanted to see. When she found herself rereading the same paragraph four times without comprehending a thing, Brennan gave it up for a lost cause.

Concrete facts might serve her better, so finally she pushed herself back from the computer and switched to her current lab notebook instead. It contained bound pages, handwritten in ink, nothing ever erased or scribbled out (rather a single line crossing through erroneous words or data with an attending explanation), all data and interpretations detailed in real time and signed off every night (plus Cam or Hodgins countersigning for her, just as she did for them). Each body she examined got its own book filled with her observations, the procedures she'd undertaken in examining the site of discovery, in preparation for removal, in cleaning and examination, and included all of her sketches, tests, and conclusions. Brennan opened her notes on the current case, pulling up the results from the isotope analysis she'd requested from Hodgins earlier and began transcribing.

That's how Sweets found her an hour later, still sitting at her desk and writing in the margins of her lab notes (doodles, mostly, because it was simply too difficult to focus knowing that he was down in the storage area reading her deepest secrets and then he was going to want to _talk_ about it) and so when Sweets finally came in she let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding and set down the pen. The doodles weren't exactly professional, but as long as they didn't obscure data she knew they were harmless to the prosecution.

Taking a seat across from her (lowering his stature to a more equal height, setting her at ease), he let out his own little sigh and confessed, "reading that was just as uncomfortable and awkward for me as it is for you. If this situation weren't ... what it is, I would have stopped at the second page."

Brennan felt the skin of her face warming, her hands pulsing with heat. "It's just a story with familiar names. We don't work at a nightclub."

"No, we don't." Sweets released a small, self-deprecating smile. "And, I'm not Gormogon."

"However, you were an appealing suspect." She shook her head with a teasing twitch of the lips, but the humor passed quickly when he remained mostly somber.

"I need to ask you something, and it's not going to be comfortable. The answer will stay just between you and me, and I'm only asking to help me interpret the way Pelant will view a certain plot element in your book."

At her gesture to continue, Sweets asked, "Was Agent Booth aware of your meetings with Ethan Sawyer?"

"No."

"Do you think he would have interpreted them as evidence of infidelity?"

Confidently, she shook her head again. "Not by themselves, no." But then more hesitantly, she inquired about the implication inherent in the question itself. "Does Pelant think I was unfaithful?"

"I'm not sure. But the clandestine visits are suggestive."

"I suppose they could be construed as such." A surge of guilt and recrimination seemed to take hold of her for a moment, as she acknowledged to herself the potential difference in outcome had she simply informed Booth of her plans. "I concealed the visits as a means to protect Booth's integrity as an investigator, as well as the integrity of the investigation. I told Booth what I had been doing as soon as I realized Ethan had been murdered, but ... in terms of our personal relationship, I should have told him sooner."

Sweets shifted as if searching for a more comfortable position. "And that brings me to my next question. Why was the character Bren meeting with the Persian? Why did she call him so many times?"

"She only met with the Persian twice," Brennan asserted evenly. "Both times, he made an offer to buy the club and both times, she rejected the offer. The phone records were forged by Jared as a means to break up the marriage."

"So, Jared framed her for infidelity, too?" Quite curious now, he asked, "Was there a particular reason you cast Jared in that role?"

"Yes, there was," she confirmed. And raised a belligerent brow as if to dare him to ask her to elaborate. "It's not something I'm willing to discuss."

The silent skirmish ended with him settling back to ask, "One last thing."

At the mention of the real Jared and whispers of infidelity, impatience had emerged in Brennan's restless movements. She fidgeted, her eyes skipping restlessly around the room, but she nodded for him to ask his last.

"How long were you aware of Ethan Sawyer's threats against Christine?"

"He wasn't threatening her."

Sweets frowned, flipping through a note pad as if seeking the actual text of Sawyer's manic ramblings. "On the tapes he talked about the demon baby."

"No, he said, _'It looks like a baby;'_ but I believe he was talking about Pelant."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. That's why I wasn't concerned."

"How can you be certain?" Sweets demanded.

"He didn't know I have a baby. I never mentioned Christine to Ethan."

"Were your sessions recorded?"

"Probably." Brennan pinched her lips together and rolled her eyes toward a corner as she tried to recall where they'd met in the psychiatric hospital. Were there cameras present? She thought there might have been passive security cameras installed throughout much of his secure ward, which meant Pelant had probably watched her talking with Ethan. Rubbing a tired hand over her brow, she finally conceded exhaustion and reminded Sweets that Booth and Christine were waiting for her at home.

Taking the hint gracefully, a few minutes later Sweets left with a promise to meet in the morning. Brennan retrieved the book (source of so much woe) and wondered what to do with it. Flipping through the pages that spelled her dreams and mapped her reality, Brennan thought about feeding the whole thing into her shredder.

Instead she deposited it in a desk drawer and locked it.

Then she went home.

~Q~

Together she and Booth cooked dinner, cleaned the kitchen, played with Christine, and it all felt so normal that Brennan could almost close her eyes and imagine the previous two days hadn't happened. When Christine began to rub her eyes, Brennan took her upstairs to prepare her for bed (it was her turn tonight) and a little while later Booth appeared in the doorway to watch Brennan read a story.

But she wasn't reading.

"This is terrible, Christine. The misogynistic writers portray the princess as a helpless creature who does as she's commanded. She leaves the kingdom when she's told and then comes back too soon when ordered to instead of waiting until the deadline passed. She falls victim to the evil fairy who is jealous of her, and ultimately the misfortune ensues because everyone does what the fairy expects them to do. The only good thing about this story is the fact that the princess is curious but instead of rewarding her curiosity, she is punished for it."

Christine's busy little hands splayed over the colorful drawing, slapping gently at the lovely blue gown the princess was wearing.

"An empiricist knows the way to learn about an object is to examine it. The princess was curious about the spindle so she picked it up. Touch. Touch can convey a great deal of information. When your father touches me, I always know what he's feeling." Then she mused thoughtfully, "Sometimes, I think it tells me what _I'm_ feeling, too."

Booth smiled from the doorway, wondering if she knew he was there. With a studied concentration that could only have come from her mother, Christine fingered the pages, felt the slippery texture wrinkling under her enthusiastic manipulations of the pliable paper. She tugged it upwards, clearly aiming for her mouth.

Brennan chuckled and pulled the book out of harm's way. "Generally, touch is safe. Tasting is more risky. Books aren't for eating, Christine."

"Buh!"

"Yes, 'BOOK.' Some books have changed history. Some books change the way people think. Books can tell us what is most important. And every book tells you something about the person who wrote it."

Turning to blink up at her mother, Christine gurgled a baby agreement and patted Brennan's cheek. She smiled, feeling again the amazement of the moment and this life that she'd written of, dreamed of. A baby in her lap, a man she loved standing by (yes, she knew he was there) and a book that clarified what mattered to her when she wrote it and to Booth when he read it.

"So the empirical princess picked up the spindle and touched it. She looked at it, too. See the brown threads wrapped around it? That was probably wool or flax. A spindle was used to coil up threads after they'd been twisted by the spinning wheel. Children today don't know how to spin, or that women spent most of their winter evenings spinning enough thread to clothe their families and it made their fingers coarse and callused. It was tiring, tedious work."

Christine mumbled and bubbled.

"Tedious work," Brennan mused. "Vitally important and usually undervalued."

Booth snorted at this, causing Christine to whirl and gurgle and bounce happily. "Da-da!"

"Why did you snort?"

"Isn't she a little young for an anthropological lecture?" Booth plucked her out of Brennan's lap, nuzzling into Christine's neck while she squealed and squirmed.

"Babies learn language by being spoken to."

He chuckled, settling the wriggling baby into her crib. "Couldn't you just say 'boring' instead of 'tedious?'"

Standing, setting the book aside, Brennan brushed up beside him and leaned her head against Booth's shoulder. "You're here for 'boring,' and that leaves 'tedious' to me."

"Did you just make a joke?"

From the corner of his eye Booth noticed Brennan's nose crumpling up a bit at the suggestion. "Not intentionally."

"That's right. Your intentional jokes usually aren't funny." She slapped him playfully. "Hey! bad example there, Christine. Your mother is setting a very bad example."

Christine was standing up and reaching over the bars already, a fact that Brennan remarked upon with motherly annoyance. "She's not inclined to sleep now that you've stimulated her with your antics. I was employing tedium to lull her into a state of somnolence."

"Oh, I agree. You were boring her to sleep."

"That's what I just said."

"Come here." Laughing, Booth tugged her closer so he could explore her cheek with puckered lips. "The second thing I ever loved about you was how serious you are most of the time; but then when you finally catch on that I'm teasing you, your eyes dance and you get this sly little half-smile. God, Bones, it slays me every time."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really."

That intrigued her, he could see. Brennan turned into his embrace more fully, slipping her arms around him but then leaning back to capture his eyes. "What was the first thing?"

Hoping to see more of said sly grin, he teased, "The first thing I ever loved about you was the way you never back down from me, even when you're wrong."

"I'm never wrong."

"Yes you are."

"Rarely."

"Case in point..."

~Q~

It took almost an hour to settle Christine for the night, the feat not being accomplished until Brennan finally ejected Booth from their daughter's room with a laugh and the promise that the faster he stopped interfering, the more time she would have to spend with him after the baby was asleep. "I love the way your mind works," Booth whispered through a tender kiss.

Cuddled together in their bed two hours later, it suddenly occurred to her that there had been no tension between them all night long. And if they were being watched... Turning until her mouth was snuggled right up next to his ear, she whispered her worry. "Booth."

"Mmm," he mumbled through drowsy lips.

"Are we supposed to look like we're angry with each other?"

"Hmm?"

Reaching up to pinch his earlobe between sharp incisors - "Ow!" and his eyes shot open - she tried again to secure his full participation in their whispered exchange. "Sorry," she muttered out loud, shifting position as if she'd accidentally injured him but then she found his tweaked lobe with her lips and soothed it more with a caress than the words that she breathed into him. "Is Pelant expecting us to be strained?"

Against her, under her hands and even through her lips on him Brennan felt Booth's entire body tense up at the query.

"Because we weren't," she pointed out while her lips skated down behind his mastoid process and he shivered involuntarily.

"Bones," he groaned helplessly, pinned down by his unconscious reaction, by her body sliding over his, her mouth inflaming him, her mind out-maneuvering his with that one, searing combination of sex and singular brilliance. She was going to seduce him into admitting something unless he turned the tables on her. Flipping her over, Booth stole control by dragging her arms above her head and lowering his own scalding lips to her silky throat. "Don't start something you can't finish."

A throaty laugh vibrated his entire being. "You love it that I don't back down."

~Q~

Their second post-engagement morning was far more harmonious than the first. They rushed through their routines, bickering over whose turn it was to stop at the market and at the front door, Booth paused and tugged Brennan closer. "Drive in with me."

"Booth, we talked about this."

"I just want to be with you as much as possible," he wheedled, provoking a hopeless sigh from her. But a thread of memory from the previous night churned low in her belly: her question, unanswered. Were they behaving in a way that would trigger unrest in Pelant? She saw that Booth might be worrying about it as well in the way his eyes darted around outside and his hand clasped hers a little more tightly than usual.

"Okay," she acquiesced, telling herself it wasn't backing down if her own instincts were on high alert as well.

~Q~

* * *

**Author's Note:** The next chapter is half finished and I'm hoping to get it posted within a few more days.


	10. Third Day

**Author's Note:** There's only a couple of chapters left, believe it or not. My original goal was simply to get Booth and Brennan through the first few days. This is day three, where the seeds of a solution are being planted even as Pelant's plot is being unraveled.

Speaking of plot, you remember when I hinted that Booth knows something that only Brennan would understand...? Sometimes you just need to know which question to ask.

~Q~

* * *

_Third Day_

After securing Christine into her car seat, Brennan had settled herself into her customary place beside Booth with care, glancing around with an unusual level of alertness that had not escaped his attention. The notion that she had fully caught on to their situation within such a short time filled him with amused pride, though he also worried there would be a heavy cost if Pelant thought he'd tipped her off. That unqualified 'yes' yesterday, for example.

As they pulled out of their neighborhood, Brennan fiddled with the armrest restlessly and then looked over at him with a held back thought. He always knew that look, the way her eyes narrowed on him, and her jaw dropped a little as if wanting to open but it was always her lips that stubbornly held her mouth shut. He could see the strain around her lips from holding words back, the struggle in her eyes that begged him to ask.

So he obliged her. "What's on your mind, Bones?"

Another quick, darting glance outside and then her eyes flew back to his. "Did you know marriage practices vary widely among different cultures?"

"Uh..." Like he'd ever spared even one second towards a thought like that one... But she never brought anything up without a reason so he waited to see where she was going with this line of conversation.

"Hand-fasting, for example."

"Fasting? What, like eating with only your mouth instead of your hands?" Her brows curdled up and he chuckled at his own joke. When she gave a long-suffering sigh he relented and took the bait. "What is hand-fasting?"

"In ancient Celtic lands and throughout much of Medieval Europe, a couple was considered married if they held hands and exchanged vows before witnesses. Fast is an archaic term meaning to securely attach or fix into place. The custom fell out of favor when the Catholic Church invalidated marriages that weren't made public first by a calling of the Banns and then performed by a priest."

What was she getting at...? "Yeah, okay..." He waited for the punchline.

"And in several hunter-gatherer cultures of central Africa, a man claims a wife by bringing a gift of game to a woman's family. If they accept the gift, she becomes his wife and goes to live with him."

Picturing a skin-clad hunter dragging off an unwilling female, he objected, "Wait, didn't she have to agree or something?"

"No." She shook her head, surprisingly casual about the wife's lack of consent. "The point is, marriages have often been arrangements between families or individuals with no involvement from a civil government. They've traditionally been private affairs."

Glancing sharply at her, Booth noted her studied lack of attention to the topic, her words angling around the edges and telling him something without actually saying anything. The way they so often did, she was waiting for him to read the subtext.

"So, if I go shoot a deer and take it to Max, that would make you mine?"

"Only if he accepts it," she countered smoothly. Arched a brow. Quirked her lips at the idea of Booth dragging venison to her father.

"He'd probably demand a hundred," Booth snorted.

Taking his hand into hers, Brennan traced her thumb over his knuckles. They had stopped at an intersection and now waited for the green light to go ahead. "Don't worry, Booth. I'm already yours."

He turned to look at her, then down at their clasped hands. "Good, because I doubt you'd forgive me for killing Bambi over you."

Solemnly, she squeezed his hand. "I don't want blood shed over me, even if it means I never get married. It's just an archaic ritual anyway."

"Between two people," he agreed. And turned back to the green light with a much lighter heart.

Another minute passed before he realized. "Hey, aren't you going to tell me you've never heard of Bambi?"

Brennan gave him a scandalized glare. "Of course I've heard of Bambi. It's a classic children's book by Felix Salten."

"What? There's a book?"

~Q~

When they met Sweets for lunch in the same niche as the previous day, the younger man looked troubled. He took his seat with a sheaf of papers in hand: addenda added to the notes he'd jotted during the previous night's reading.

Taking his own seat next to his partner, Booth regarded the psychologist's troubled demeanor with concern. "What's wrong?"

Instead of answering, Sweets glanced over his notes and then looked directly at Brennan. "If you had to guess, do you think Pelant is more like Jared, or Max?"

"Me?" Startled at the question, Brennan bit her lip, uncomfortable with the idea of attempting any kind of psychological analysis. "I'm ... I don't do motive or ... I don't know."

"Who was Max in your story?"

"Why are you asking," Brennan deflected, uneasy as the reason for his questions sank in and made her abdominal contents churn again.

"Because the last chapter is missing. Did you reveal who the Max character really was?"

"Yes." She glanced away and clenched her fidgeting hands and then asked her own question. "How long has he been watching me?"

"I don't know for certain, but probably since mid 2011."

"Almost two years," Booth barked, growing even more uneasy.

"Possibly. Definitely since January 2012."

That first case that had drawn them all in and then implicated the FBI as a source of corruptions. Booth growled and sank back again, knowing Sweets probably was right about how long they'd been in Pelant's sights.

Nodding, Brennan also resigned herself to that reality and then, slowly, answered the question he'd asked. "In my story, Max was the mastermind. He sent Arastoo to make offers on the club, he sent Worstenbach, and he sent Jared."

"Can you remember anything else about that last chapter?"

"Max Keenan escaped consequences as I recall. I wrote it four years ago, however, and I haven't read it since." And while she possessed a superlative facility for recollection, this particular book she had deliberately pushed to the back corners of her mind.

"But two years ago, it may have still been intact," Sweets suggested. "I believe Pelant may have given himself a role in your story. If he sees himself as Max, then he's in control and that makes him even more dangerous. If he sees himself as Jared, then he is an antihero who tried to save you from a larger danger than himself. He would have given you clues to help you clear your name, just like the Jared character did."

Booth stirred and asked quietly, "How would we determine that?"

Sweets engaged Brennan, essentially asking her to think. "He would have signaled you in a meaningful way, giving clues to make you think of this book. Has he ever done that?"

The change in expression washed over her immediately. "Yes. He ... he said motherhood made me less intelligent."

"He gave you that Marigold flower," Booth added, though he didn't remember flowers being in the book.

Sweets scribbled more notes, looked up. "That's good. Did you ever feel that he left something behind for you to find?"

Other than the evidence from his various murders...? Brennan shook her head to indicate she'd never knowingly received a message.

Booth, on the other hand, looked positively stunned. "He was in our house. He left something in our house."

"What?!" She spun to look at him. "When?"

"The day you left, the day Christine was baptized."

Horrified, she repeated, "He was in our house? Why didn't you tell me that?"

"It didn't come up," Booth defended, but he was halted before he could finish.

"What did he do there," Sweets interrupted sharply, throwing a silencing hand Booth's way.

"It's in the case file," Booth answered angrily. "Flynn didn't follow up."

"What did he do?" Sweets repeated urgently.

"He was just trying to scare us," Brennan suggested uneasily, but the thought of Pelant being in her home made her skin flicker as if insects had begun crawling over it. She barely resisted surging urges to begin scratching and brushing at herself.

"No, he was leaving you a message, Doctor Brennan, only you weren't there to receive it." Turning back to Booth, shuffling through the files he had on hand, Sweets asked again. "Tell us exactly what he did." By now he had the file out and had flipped it open to see if he could find the narrative notes from that incident.

Booth rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling, fishing details out of his memory. "Okay, he walked through a lot of rooms, he went into Christine's room and looked in the crib. He took a photo of it."

"He did that at Angela's house, too," Brennan recalled uneasily, wondering why Pelant was targeting their innocent babies. It had to be an intimidation tactic, showing them what damage he could do on a whim. "He left flower petals around Michael Vincent in his crib. That's about the same time that he said motherhood made me less intelligent."

"Okay, good." More scribbled notes. "What else?"

Another stunned expression was followed immediately by Booth leveling a curse. "The clock! Damn, _that's_ where I saw it!"

Two puzzled faces waited for him to explain. He shook his head, wondering what this meant. "When I got home, Bones, the way I knew something was wrong was your alarm clock was malfunctioning. It was flashing the time 4:47. So I went to check the security camera and that's how I spotted him. He'd switched your clock for one that said nothing but 4:47."

"Oohhh..." That might have been enough, Brennan realized with shock. Being framed, the baby, and the time: she might have thought of the book under those circumstances.

"Where is that clock," Sweets demanded. "He left something in that clock for her to find."

"It's in evidence at the FBI."

~Q~

The evidence room at the Hoover was a large storage bunker in the basement. The three retrieved the clock (unplugged, sniffed for explosives, bagged, labeled and languishing ever since) and set it down on a table while Booth filled out a form requesting a transfer of evidence to the Jeffersonian. "I want Angela to take a look at it first," he explained.

Brennan agreed that was a wise course of action. Sweets poked through the other items contained in the box with the clock, pulling up a Polaroid snapshot of Christine's cradle. "Where was this recovered?"

"In the crib." Booth snatched it out of Sweets's hand but then didn't know what to do with it.

"Doctor Brennan, is there anything in that photo that means something to you?"

Taking the photo cautiously, she examined it closely and when she saw it, she gasped. "A wolf."

"What? Where!"

Booth took the photo back and peered at it where Brennan pointed. "There. That's not Christine's plush toy."

"It wasn't there when I got home, Bones. Only this photo was."

"Why a wolf?" she wondered.

Sweets cleared his throat. "A wolf in sheep's clothing after your baby, perhaps. Ethan Sawyer seemed to be a threat to her. And Ethan Sawyer was killed by wolves."

"We gotta find out what's in that damn clock." Booth turned back to the transfer form.

~Q~

* * *

Author's Note: Now why did Pelant go to all the trouble of breaking into Booth and Brennan's house ... staring up at the security camera from Christine's room ... and what did he do to their clock? Was it all simply scare tactics, or did those actions mean something only Brennan would understand...?


	11. Intercession

**I owe thank you notes for reviews! **My summer freedom is coming to an end, the Bones season nine premiere is just over a week away, and I have been frantically trying to write out the endings to _two_ very different and very complicated stories at once.

Know that I am grateful for the gift of every single review and I will personally thank every one of you who is signed in. It's probably going to be a few more days, however.

**Author's Note:** Sometimes figuring out what to write in these author notes is harder than writing the rest of chapter. And that's saying something because it's a scary thing to be a writer. There is stress in finding the story, carrying it along, and of course, _resolving it to your satisfaction!_ I worry about disappointing any of you lovely readers. It keeps me up at night. Truly, it does. I don't know what you expect from me.

Hopefully it's something like this... :)

~Q~

* * *

_Intercession  
_

After escorting Brennan and the clock safely back to the lab, Booth returned to the Hoover building and stood outside for a moment, facing the heavy brown structure with indecision. Tilting his head back, he looked up to the cerulean heavens spanning above rich green leaves from the trees planted along the sidewalk and considered God's plan in all of this.

Only a couple of days ago, Pelant had turned his dreams into a nightmare, requiring a sacrifice of Booth that had tormented him just as Abraham was tormented by giving up Isaac. He'd done it to save lives, fearing his own soul was going to be lost in the process, and yet ... somehow he should have known that God would intervene. The sacrifice had turned everything around, now as it did then in Abraham's day, merely by his willingness to go through with it. She didn't pull away; their love was stronger; answers were unfurling to questions none of them had even known to ask.

Surely this was Divine Will at work. Booth crossed himself.

Someone bumped into him, knocking him free of his reverie, and at that grim reminder of how quickly a man could slip and fall, Booth abruptly changed course. Instead of returning to work, he turned to the north and walked two additional blocks to the grey stones of St. Patrick's on the corner of Tenth and F Streets. The original church was built by stone masons, built by themselves for services while they spent the rest of their time busily building the future capital city. There had always been a Catholic Church here but this stately stone sanctuary in front of him was actually the third church on the site.

Inside St. Patrick's was like no other Catholic church that he'd seen. It _felt_ like God in here. There was no other way to describe how his soul was uplifted merely by walking through the doors of this particular place, how peaceful it felt to be enfolded within the pristine ivory stones flooded with golden light. Glowing marble statues continued the theme of purity, of light, of hope and beauty and he would always stand at the entrance and feel the presence of the Lord before entering any further. This time he had to hurry because Confession was nearly over.

Dipping the fingers of his right hand into the angelic font at the entrance, Booth crossed himself and genuflected towards the Tabernacle on his way to the place of penitence. He'd missed that afternoon's homily, the impulse to confess having come almost too late to catch the priest at all. With only a few minutes left after everyone else had left, Booth hurried to slip into the small confessional closet and unburden himself. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit help me father, for I have sinned. It has been nine days since my last confession."

_Please let the father still be in here._

A comforting and familiar voice spoke to him from the other side of the screen, quoting Scripture. "_If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness._"

"Thanks be to God." Booth settled onto the kneeler, taking a moment to ponder what had to come out first, what had compelled him to come in here when he'd been standing on the street a few minutes ago. Murder, anger, hatred, but that wasn't what he'd been thinking about on Pennsylvania Avenue. He'd reached out to God and acknowledged his own impatience.

Sins were organized into categories of either mortal (placing one's soul in danger) or venal (small, petty transgressions such as impatience) but as he thought over the past few days, Booth decided his greatest sin was lack of faith. He hadn't trusted God, or Brennan, and that was what led him to anger, hatred and murder plots. That terrible loneliness and fear when he'd lost sight of God humbled him on the street as he'd come to understand that neither his partner nor his God had ever left his side. "I've lacked faith in God's Goodness, in His plan, in His Will. I believed for a time that God had abandoned me."

Half the reason for confession was to obtain absolution, but Booth's knowledge of psychology had unveiled the other side, the hidden side. Free counseling, of a sort. A good priest always listened attentively, reflecting back what was said, helping the penitent to gain perspective and understand the root of his or her mistakes. A good priest was practically a psychologist (the same as a good bartender), and it was Brennan's tongue-in-cheek quip from that unpublished book that flitted through Booth's head when this good priest proved himself. "Can you describe the circumstances that brought about this loss of faith?"

"Yes." Booth wandered over all the facts, trying to order them into a narrative that his confessor could understand. He had no fear that what he said would leave this space, because a priest was forbidden to reveal any confession (unless a life was in imminent danger). And Pelant might be able to manipulate cameras and internet connections, but it was pretty unlikely that he'd have planted listening devices in a church. "I'm an FBI Agent. My partner, she's a beautiful, amazing woman. I fell in love with my partner and we've been together for about two years."

"You're married?"

"No. No, see, that's part of the problem. I'm guilty of the sin of fornication. She's an atheist. She doesn't believe in marriage and I love her so I'm with her, you know. I'm faithful to her, we have a child together. She just doesn't believe in marriage. Didn't. And I was okay with it. I mean, I know it's a sin to be with her while we're not married but I am committed to her. All right? So the fact that I'm fornicating is not the sin I'm here to confess."

"I understand," the priest assured him, "but I'm sure you realize that the sin of fornication places your soul in a state of mortal peril."

"Mortal peril, right. That's the problem, okay? See, the problem isn't fornication because she changed her mind. A couple of days ago she told me she finally wants to get married. _She_ proposed to _me_. But there's this guy, a _murderer_, he's been watching us. Somehow he knew she'd proposed so he called me and told me he would kill five innocent people if I accepted her proposal. He described five random people that were right next to me at that time. We were in a park when Pelant called and he described four innocent people that were right next to me, but he said he would kill _five_. I thought he meant my partner, our daughter; or someone else we both know. These threats are serious, father. I have every reason to believe he would kill five people because he's already killed at least five people that we know of. So, I had to break the engagement; I was forced to lie to her."

He knew he'd grown more upset as the confession came out, especially that minute on the playground when he'd known Pelant was watching, was stalking like a hidden predator and there was nothing he could do to keep them safe but just give in. Nothing he could do but sacrifice his own soul to keep everyone else safe. The priest soothed him gently. "That lie is not a sin under the circumstances you've presented, as God considers saving lives to be the utmost priority."

Sighing, Booth nodded. "I lost my faith in God, though. I mean, how could He let this happen? I mean, she finally changed her mind. And you don't even know what she's been through in life to make it where she doesn't believe in permanence, but God does. God _knows_ what she's been through, and me turning her down after she opened up to me ... I was afraid it would destroy her. This guy, Pelant, that's what he _wanted_ to happen. Why did God let this happen?"

"So you began to doubt God..." the listener prompted, not judging and not answering the anguished question. Perhaps he intuitively knew Booth was confessing all of this because he'd discovered the answer himself. God's Will would be revealed in time.

"So yeah, I doubted God, all right? I didn't see how this could be part of His plan. I thought Pelant is going to get away with it, there's no way she'll ever propose again. She's been disappointed and abandoned so many times in life and now I'm the reason her heart is broken. I'm gonna lose her ... So, I started planning to kill Pelant. Serious plans. That's the next sin I have to confess."

The anger and fear had begun to consume him, turning into sight-lines and ammunition acquisition, secrets and lies that would have ripped Brennan right out of his life. He would have withdrawn from her; she would have been devastated. He would have lost her completely. _"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' __But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment."_ Booth shivered, sensing just how close he'd come to destroying everything he loved, at his own hands.

Because of anger.

Because he'd lost his faith.

"Are these all of the sins you are here to reconcile today?"

"Well, yeah, plus the fact that I've been lying to my partner. A couple of times she's asked me point blank if I'm hiding something. She's brilliant, you know? A certified genius. So I've had to lie to her. Pelant said he'd kill five if I told her the truth."

The priest considered the information given so far. "Of course, reconciliation cannot take place without contrition."

Booth knew that, it was the reason he was kneeling here with tremors and that shaking sense of a tragedy averted. So close to catastrophe, and only by the Grace of God had Bones somehow held onto her own faith strongly enough to pull him back from the brink of destruction.

"I felt like I had to sacrifice her, sacrifice her happiness and my happiness to save lives, and I was angry at God for not intervening. I was angry. I lost faith in God, started planning a _murder_, and my partner just ... it's like God worked through her. She doesn't believe in God but she does amazing things. She's a good person, father. She kept reaching out to me and had faith in me when I was so convinced she'd never trust me again. Things are happening that will expose this guy Pelant, all because of me turning her down."

How could she trust him that much? How could discovering how deeply she loved him be what saved them both?

"And this morning...?" A warm smile softened his words. "She took my hand and starts talking about hand fasting. She said that marriages used to be a private agreement between two people. I feel like she was making a vow to me. That she _feels_ like we're married and it has nothing to do with public announcements and a piece of paper."

Surprised, the priest smiled back, the sound of amazement coming clearly through the screen. "Let me understand your situation. Your partner doesn't believe in God or marriage, but she proposed?"

"Yeah, she changed her mind. She said she wanted me to be happy, wanted me to have a Catholic wedding because it's important to me."

"...And this man, Pelant? He threatened to kill innocent people unless you declined, and you were not permitted to explain why."

"Right," Booth confirmed.

"But your partner reached out again and suggested hand-fasting?"

"Yeah, but I mean, it's not marriage. I'd still be committing the sin of fornication with her, and since I'm not sorry about that... But I'm sorry for doubting God, and I'm sorry for starting to think about killing Pelant because if I'd have done that, I would have lost her. I realize that now."

Reverently, the priest rushed to comfort the tormented man in the confessional. "Surely God works in mysterious ways. Your partner has given you the answer. God has worked His will through her, despite her lack of belief. All of your sins may yet be forgiven."

~Q~

So many things to do. Booth spent some time drawing up his notes and when he finally got back to the Jeffersonian he hoped enough time would have passed that Angela might have cracked the clock code. The first stop was Cam's office, however, because she snared him as he passed the autopsy suite (rather like a wolf spider laying in wait, which was probably not something she wanted to hear. Cam hated spiders.)

"Camille! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?" He thought about actually calling her a wolf spider just to annoy her as Booth yanked his arm out of her clawing grasp and rubbed the bruised flesh.

Door shut and he was trapped behind the glass.

"Like the one you've given us?" Her arms were crossed and she hadn't corrected him on the name. Not good. "What's this I hear about you not wanting to get married because of her atheism? How could you do that to her?"

Stunned, he could only stand with his eyes bulging and his tongue flailing for directions. "What? I ... _Huh_?"

"She's been avoiding the subject, but not twenty four hours after proposing to you, Brennan announced that you weren't getting married because you thought she didn't have enough faith. She said something to the effect of your Christian marriage ritual requiring a certain level of reverent regard." And though Brennan had done an admirable job of concealment, Camille Saroyan had noticed the only partially hidden sadness, the pain that leaked out when Brennan talked about marrying under a shadow of doubt. She thought Booth doubted her, and Cam was determined to shake some sense into him before the doubts began eating her beloved forensic anthropologist alive.

Because if Brennan fell apart, the entire Jeffersonian was going down in flames right afterwards. Cam had been through that once before, thank you very much, and had no intention of ever letting it happen again.

Not enough faith? Not getting married because she was an atheist?! He started to deny it.

"That's..." ..._pure **genius**_. His stunned brain halted the automatic defense almost immediately because if that was the reason she'd given - to take the blame and twist it onto her own lack of belief - then it was pure, unbelievable, God-given genius. It was the perfect scapegoat because she was _right_. Stunned again, he actually laughed which made Cam's scowl deepen.

"This isn't funny, Seeley."

"Yes it is." He shook his head and turned his head down to the slim white envelope in his hand. The note he'd brought to Cam only she'd grabbed him before he could find her on his own. "You'd think I'd know better by now not to underestimate her, but I still do and she ... God, I love her. She's a freaking genius. Do you know what that means, Camille?"

Cam's arms fell, along with her chin when he almost seemed to begin vibrating with joy.

"It means he's never going to get the best of her. She's ten damn steps ahead of every one of us, all the damn time. He's never going to be able to out-think her. Here." He laughed again and handed over the envelope.

"What's this?"

"Just do what it says, okay?"

Tearing it open, she extracted the slip of paper tucked inside, reading it with a quick flick of the eyes and looking up in shock. Chuckling as he saw her reaction to what he'd written, Booth shook his head and explained, "She gave me what I needed and trusted me to figure it out. That's why I'm laughing." He turned and went to find his genius.

Booth left while laughing, leaving Cam to return to the note and read it again. She didn't understand what was going on, but his laughter and the instructions combined to bring a smile to her own face. Time may tell what Seeley Booth had in mind, but meanwhile Cam knew the wait was going to kill her.

~Q~

Angela and Brennan were grouped around the detached laptop set up in the secure space set aside in Limbo, both looking up hastily when Booth walked into the area. The joy that brought him down to her faded only slightly when he saw two confused faces lifting to greet him. As he rounded behind them, he saw what they were looking at on the screen: streams of data, a decryption code, and video feed from the psychiatric hospital where Ethan Sawyer had been a patient. "You found something."

His partner turned and nodded solemnly. "Hodgins is checking for trace evidence now. We opened the clock and found a flash drive taped inside."

"You're trusting it in your system?"

"No," Angela assured him. "This computer is an orphan."

"So, what is that?" Booth pointed to the long streams of symbols taking up one side of the screen.

"The key to Ethan Sawyer's code."

Booth's eyes widened in astonishment while Brennan remarked calmly, "I find it ironic that you all had to work so hard to break Ethan's code, only to discover Pelant had apparently left the decryption key in plain view for me to find."

Angela met Booth's curious gaze with another assenting nod. "Everything we needed to prove her innocent is here, Booth. The original digital security files, the encoding that was used to alter the images, and even back-up copies of the paperwork that ordered Ethan Sawyer's transfer to the unsecured ward. Pelant wasn't the one who ordered the transfer."

That didn't make sense. "How can you be sure," Booth asked. "The papers could have been forged."

"If there was a forgery, it was on the original, hard copy of the transfer order. It wasn't done by computer."

"Are you saying Pelant didn't kill Ethan?"

Brennan was the one who answered this time, gesturing to what the evidence provided. "We don't know who killed Ethan; what we do know is that the transfer was done on paper, and Pelant left me this evidence that would have cleared me."

"So, if Pelant wasn't the one who had Ethan Sawyer transferred out of the secure ward, who was...?"

It could be anyone connected with the hospital, but Brennan knew the symbolic name. "The Gravedigger."

"No, Heather Taffet is dead," Angela objected.

The partners locked gazes, both recalling the Max Keenen/Gravedigger character from her novel. Someone above Pelant, pulling strings, and Pelant may have been trying to save her from that master of marionettes.

~Q~

* * *

**Author's Note:** The likelihood of me being right about any of this is extremely remote. But oh! what fun it is to speculate. :D

Meanwhile, this story is all about Booth's faith, Brennan's genius, and two stories intertwined. I hope you've enjoyed it because we are reaching our final destination, which I am hoping to post before the 15th.


	12. The Fourth Day

**Author's Caveat:** Often it is more difficult to end a story than it is to begin one. Here is my humble offering of an end that satisfies romantic souls.

For my readers who don't know, I do a lot of behind-the-scenes research for my stories. Everything I write is correctly rendered to the best of my ability. That includes certain facts presented in what you are about to read and it includes locations where the events of this story take place. For example, St. Patrick's Church on 10th & F Streets in Washington DC is a real Catholic Church. I have attended Mass there. And while subjective, the descriptions of its interior are authentic.

~Q~

_"God made the two great lights, the greater one to govern the day, and the lesser one to govern the night, and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky, to illuminate the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good. Evening came, and morning followed—the fourth day." _

_~Genesis 1:16-19~_

~Q~

* * *

_The Evening Came...  
_

~Q~

"Why would he frame me and then give me the evidence to clear myself?"

Angela had frowned, still studying the computer intently as she applied the provided decryption key to restore the altered security images, which in turn proved this evidence packet would have exonerated her best friend. Booth wondered where her 'book' had gone, but answered Brennan's puzzled question with a meaningful glance towards her friend. Did Angela know everything about the unpublished book she'd helped recover...? When Brennan's eyes widened a little and she shook her head, Booth shrugged. "That's a question for Sweets."

Angela turned away from her work to add, "maybe he framed you on an impulse and then felt bad about it."

Like the Jared character?

"Maybe it doesn't matter," Brennan grumbled. She still hated psychology.

~Q~

"Wow." Late in the afternoon, Dr. Sweets looked over the proof of Pelant's intentions with surprise. "Someone other than Pelant may have arranged Ethan Sawyer's death. And Pelant ultimately intended to help clear you of the murder."

"All right, so what does this mean?" Booth paced up and down the small working space, growing tired and frustrated again because he just didn't know what to do. Nothing made sense anymore. Was Pelant a friend or a foe? Was he good or evil? "I mean, he sent that girl Anna to kill FBI agents and she tried to kill you, right? He killed those other people, right?"

"Maybe he didn't," Sweets said thoughtfully.

"What?" Booth halted in shock.

Brennan looked up from the files she'd been pouring over with interest as well.

"If there's an accomplice, maybe that person is the actual killer. Or, they are placed in such a way as to help him evade detection. It would explain how he was able to do all the stuff we suspect him of while still seeming to be at home under 24 hour monitoring. This accomplice may have brought the technology to him while Pelant was under house arrest. He or she may have also provided him with the aliases he's used, including the abrupt and total identity change to an Egyptian citizen while he was in FBI custody."

"Before you said Pelant wanted me to prove my book was true, but now you think Pelant was trying to protect me?" Brennan narrowed her eyes onto Sweets, waiting for him to explain which motive was the real one. If he even knew, which she highly doubted. All he had was a long list of 'maybes,' a fact that Brennan found to be all too frequent where psychological profiling was concerned.

"Look, I don't know!" Frustrated as well, Sweets threw his hands out as if in defeat. "All I can say is, I do not believe it is a coincidence that the events of Ethan Sawyer's murder investigation so closely match what you wrote in an unpublished novel. I also don't think it's a coincidence that Pelant hid evidence that would clear your name inside a clock set to the symbolic time from that same book. None of this is a coincidence, Doctor Brennan. But beyond that ... I don't know."

Another moment passed while all three simply sat and considered everything. Drawing a cautious breath, Booth ventured to ask Sweets one more question. "Why do you think he did ... what he did?"

He knew Brennan had guessed Pelant was behind the broken engagement for the most part, but he still didn't want to actually say it out loud. Obeying orders was long ingrained in him, at least where work was concerned and absolutely where saving lives was involved. Especially where _her_ life was concerned.

Softly, as if just realizing, Brennan supplied the answer. "He's looking for acclaim..."

A very impressed psychologist raised his brows and gestured towards her, as if to say she'd hit the proverbial nail perfectly into the hole. Brennan didn't notice, however, because she hadn't intended to answer Booth's question. Rather, she'd realized what Pelant might have expected, and saw that at least part of the lashing out against her friends after the fact may have been spite at her apparent ingratitude. In the book, Bren had thanked Jared. "I never thanked him."

"So if you send a nice thank you note, he'll just go away and leave us all alone?"

"Normally with stalkers the victim should avoid contact at all costs. However, in this case crediting him might actually cause him to step back," Sweets suggested.

"No way. It's too big a risk."

"Look," Sweets redirected, "Whether he's working with someone, for someone, or working alone, his actions were designed to accomplish a goal: to keep you two separated, to keep _you_ off balance" - he directed the first to Brennan, then switched to Booth - "and to provoke you into a self-destructive course. He used my unpublished papers to show us what information he's capable of retrieving and I think she's right. He's pissed that she didn't acknowledge his actions."

He had answered Booth indirectly by seeming to talk about the framing, but this made sense of Pelant's desire to stay the center of attention. Sweets had warned him that Pelant might react badly to the engagement. Turning to Brennan, he advised, "if you continue to ignore him, he will escalate. If you acknowledge his efforts to get your attention, it may help. It might draw him out into the open."

Suddenly getting what Sweets was driving at, Booth sighed and realized reaching out to contact Pelant would be just about the last thing anyone expected. "Well, we said we need to do the unexpected..._"_ This was it. He almost laughed because it was just too insane to think of thanking a murderer for being framed. "Right, how is she going to do this? I mean, we can't send him a 'thanks-for-thinking-of-me' card."

"I'll ask him to call me," Brennan shrugged.

"How?"

Sometimes she gave him a look that reminded Booth of a very patient teacher working with a particularly slow student, and she was giving him that look now. "I'll walk up into the lab and say out loud, 'Pelant, I want to talk; call me.'"

It was so literal, he had to laugh.

~Q~

She did exactly that. Temperance Brennan placed herself directly in front of one of the security cameras in the lab and spoke. "I know what you did for me. I am ... impressed by your ingenuity. From one neurological fruit to another, you are a formidable adversary. However, as I am concerned for the safety of others, perhaps there is a way to continue our game of wits in a way that does not endanger additional lives."

~Q~

The phone did not ring that night, proving nothing. Maybe he wasn't watching as closely as they'd feared, or maybe what she'd said on camera was enough. "Now I'm beginning to think like Sweets," Brennan growled with obvious displeasure.

Too many maybes.

Booth seemed oddly solicitous towards her that night, bringing her wine and a book, smiling at her, and often watching her when he thought she wouldn't notice. (She always noticed.) When they went to bed, he pulled her against him, wrapping himself around her and clasping her hand against her sternum so that her heart beat against his wrist. "I'm yours, too, Bones. Always."

~Q~

_...and Morning followed—the Fourth Day._

Hand written notes slipped into palms brought them together the next afternoon.

He got there first. The next three people entered separately, two of them looking around curiously and one turning her eyes this way and that to take in the artistry. The interior glowed alabaster white with warm amber light spilling through the windows and pure white sculptures standing sentry. The fourth and fifth people to to enter did so briskly, the eyes of one narrowed in speculation as she strode forward boldly and met him at the holy water fonts (lovely angels offering cool purity to tortured souls, like she did for him).

She looked suspicious at the moment. It might have come out sounding belligerent but for the fact that she spoke softly. "Why am I here?"

"Do you trust me?"

Brennan glanced past him into the golden glowing interior of the church, then returned her silver gaze to his hopeful eyes. "Yes." Because she did, even without any good reason, but being summoned to a church on such short notice had aroused an extraordinary level of curiosity. Even Cam didn't seem to know why Booth had wanted them there. The only answer was the succinctly worded note asking Cam to bring Brennan to St. Patrick's at the designated hour. Four p.m, on the fourth day of May.

Behind her, the door opened again and she whirled in surprise to see her father coming towards her.

Booth smiled at Max, shaking his hand. "I see you got my note."

Sharing a coy little smile, Max waved an envelope and nodded. Then he winked at Brennan, causing her to frown slightly and turn to take in the others. She saw Angela and Hodgins standing nearby, as well as Sweets. And of course, she'd come here at Cam's mysterious urging. It reminded her rather too much of that ill-fated night at The Checkerbox. "Booth? What's going on?"

He might have managed to surprise her after all (a rare occurrence indeed). "Something unexpected. Something sacred. And a compromise."

Booth grinned at his partner's thoroughly bewildered reception of that cryptic comment. She glanced at her surroundings again as the first inkling of understanding emerged. "You gave me the idea yesterday, Bones. This is one step above hand-fasting. Come on." Tenderly, he wrapped his hand around hers and tugged her towards the altar.

"Father Mackey, this is my partner, Doctor Temperance Brennan. Bones, Father Mackey." After polite nods, Booth turned to her and explained why he'd asked Cam to bring her to the church. It didn't have to happen here, but evading watching eyes was easier on short notice in an unexpected place such as this one. Still, he wanted to move fast and explain his idea before Pelant had a chance to realize what they might be doing. "Bones, Father Mackey needs to hear why you proposed marriage to me."

"Why?"

"Please, just trust that I'm asking for a good reason. Why did you propose?"

It was not often that Booth got ahead of her, but once in a while... Brennan turned to regard the priest curiously. He was smiling, a benevolent presence and Booth squeezed her hand as if to urge her to get started. "Marriage is important to you," she began, still unsure what he wanted her to say.

"Yeah, but not to you, Bones. I was perfectly happy just living with you. It was a compromise and I was happy with what we have. I was never going to ask you to marry me in a Catholic ceremony because I know it would require you to violate your beliefs about God and marriage. But that's what you proposed, Bones: a Catholic ceremony. That's what I need you to explain for Father Mackey."

"God doesn't exist," she began but stopped when she saw his '_don't be rude to God in His house_' glare that she'd received numerous times. Hesitating a moment to frame her thoughts in a less offensive manner, she found herself looking towards the front of the church. There was a Crucifix there, just as in every Catholic church, but this one was like none she'd ever seen before. It divided her attention, splitting her into feelings evoked by the image her eyes took in and feelings for Booth that had moved her to stop being selfish and give him what he had sacrificed for her.

"You believe God exists," she finally said, knowing this was the better way to start. "You were compromising your religious beliefs just to be with me. I kept thinking you wouldn't propose because you were hurt by Rebecca and Hannah, and I was hurt that you compared me to them. I thought that's why you wouldn't propose so I was stubborn and refused to do it. But you kept dropping all those hints and I began to understand that you _do_ want to get married to me. And yet you still wouldn't propose. I couldn't understand why."

Softly he prompted, "But now you do?"

"Yes. A few weeks ago I started researching and I saw what it involved. A civil ceremony isn't enough. I would have to be baptized and go for premarital counseling with you and make promises regarding procreation and our children's religious indoctrination. I didn't want to do any of that."

"I know," he assured her. "That's why I wasn't going to propose."

"But then I kept reading and I learned about why you go to confession. I learned that us living together is a sin in your religion that would keep you out of your heaven. When I realized you could die and you would be ... not right with your God, that you feel you are risking your soul to be with me, Booth..."

She was emotional again, just like that day under the Wisteria when she'd tried to explain how fear of his death had finally touched her. "You love me that much..." She paused again, looked again to the Crucifix as if it was telling her something. God did not exist, it was just art, but it seemed to reach towards her in the same way she wanted to reach towards Booth. Turning back to the man she loved, Brennan asked "...How could I not do the same for you?"

"Bones..." Tenderly he brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles.

"I love you, Booth. I'm sorry for selfishly disregarding what is so important to you. I want to be your wife so you will have the peace that you deserve."

As so often seemed to happen, the partners had forgotten everything but each other, standing together in their own bubble with hands and eyes linked while communing on levels their audience could only guess at. It almost seemed as if they were already _one_ when moments such as these occurred.

This was what he'd realized yesterday in Cam's office. When Brennan had blamed herself for the broken engagement, he'd realized she had read the catechism and had proposed for him, out of respect for his religious faith. "You knew what you were doing. You proposed a Catholic wedding knowing you would have to be baptized, and go with me to an Engaged Encounter weekend with other religious people."

His softly uttered question restored her composure partly, enough so that Brennan gave him a puzzled glance. "Of course. I always know what I'm doing."

However, she didn't know what she and Booth together were doing to everyone else. Angela laughed and wiped tears away, leaning her head on Hodgins's shoulder, above which his lightly bearded face was beaming. Cam was smiling too, showing her rare dimples. Sweets had broken into a wide grin at this typical performance because he'd known this about them all along. Even Max was misty-eyed. And the enchanted priest stepped forward to clasp his hands over theirs.

"The sacrament of Christian marriage is conferred from one spouse to the other by the giving of yourselves to one another, freely, knowingly, and in the presence of witnesses. Because you are not a baptized Christian, Temperance, the Church teaches that you are not able to confer the sacrament upon Seeley. However, from what I have had the privilege to witness, your mutual willingness to lovingly sacrifice your own desires for one another is the essence of the sacrament. God will acknowledge a natural marriage exists between you and Seeley if you are willing to meet the conditions of free and knowing consent in the presence of witnesses. By what you've just professed, you have demonstrated that consent."

Grasping her other hand so they were standing face to face, Booth made his proposal. "You don't have to be baptized, Bones. The Catholic Church accepts both natural marriages and Sacramental marriages as valid before God. All we need to perform a natural marriage is permission from the bishop (which I got yesterday afternoon), a priest and two reliable witnesses, and one more thing."

Eyes wide now, she watched Booth waiting for her to ask. "What's the last thing?"

"Consent of both parties, of course." His smile spread into the charm smile that always won her over. "Bones, do you consent to a natural marriage with me?"

"Are you proposing?"

"Are you accepting?"

Glancing around her, seeing the trouble he'd gone to, she felt happiness tug a smile and worry held it down just a little. "What about Pelant?"

"Here's what I'm thinking." Booth glanced at the priest, who nodded as if he knew what was coming. "This is a private moment that will stay inside these walls. It's between you and me, with our closest friends to witness it. It's not a legal marriage so he won't know it happened."

"So, we're not really going to be married?"

"Not as far as any civil authority is concerned."

"But, I thought you want to be legally married with all the attending rights and obligations."

Sweetly, he palmed her cheek and lifted her face to his. "If we do this, we'll be married before God. To a Catholic, that's the only thing that matters."

This option was not something she'd expected at all and, it occurred to her, neither would Pelant. It was a compromise that somehow gave them both what they wanted and the fact that he would offer it made her feel an emotional surge that rivaled what she'd felt at the moment of Christine's birth: a love-charged happiness that made her burst into tears and throw herself against him.

After several minutes passed he pulled her back to smile through his own tears and ask again. "So, Bones, will you consent to a natural, hand-fasted marriage with me?"

They held each other's gazes for another long moment (getting lost in each other as they always would), until someone cleared a throat impatiently and Brennan responded with a joyful sob. "Yes."

~Q~

After the brief ceremonial exchange of vows, their friends and Max departed singly so as to avoid drawing attention.

Waiting for her turn to leave, Brennan wandered away to study the Crucifix that reached for her from behind the altar. This one was different from the few others she'd seen in various churches. Whereas most featured an agonized man suffering the wounds of the world, this one seemed an embodiment of victory and triumph. The pristine marble Celtic cross was three meters tall, releasing a nearly life-sized sculpture of Jesus. She found herself compelled to look at it, to marvel at the emotion carved in stone, because this Christian Savior was rising away from the cross, leaving death behind Him in the form of an impression in the stone. His face and arms were raised up towards heaven, His face infused with joy as His unblemished body was lifted upwards. It was ... hopeful. It reached her in ways most religious art could not.

Sensing Booth come up beside her, Brennan turned to see him looking at the same sculpture, and he was smiling softly to see her affected by it. Booth also reached her in ways most other people could not. "It's not like other Crucifixes," she remarked quietly.

"No, it's not," he agreed. "The artist says his hands were guided by the Holy Spirit. That Crucifix is the reason I come in here for daily Mass."

"Why?" She wondered if he felt the same way she did when looking at it.

Turning to his newly hand-fasted wife, he took her hand and squeezed, vowing he would hold onto her for life. "Because my religion teaches that love will always triumph over evil. It reminds me of what I believe in."

~Q~

_"Marriage is based on the consent of the contracting parties, that is, on their will to give themselves, each to the other, mutually and definitively, in order to live a covenant of faithful and fruitful love."_

_~Catechism of the Catholic Church~_  
_Part 2, Section 2, Chapter 3, Article 7 _

* * *

**Author's Note:** Assuming they did it this way, as far as Booth's religious faith is concerned, he's now a married man who is no longer fornicating. His soul is safe. As far as civil law is concerned, Temperance Brennan is not married at all and there's no 'piece of paper.' Her atheism is not compromised either. As far as Pelant and his potential puppet-master are concerned, nothing happened. ;)

For readers, for reviews, for notes and for everything, thank you so much.  
I hope you enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed spinning it.

~11 September 2013~


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